Eating Behaviours Trivia Quiz

Answer: Social learning theory

This theory was originally developed by Bandura, and suggested that we model the eating behaviours and attitudes to food of role models from the media or peers and family. It is seen that celebrities gain money and fame as rewards for dieting or advertising, and therefore we model our attitudes and eating behaviours (such as constantly restraining our diet) on theirs in the hopes of gaining the same rewards of fame and money.

This is known as vicarious reinforcement.

Answer: Herman and Mack (1975)

Herman and Mack suggested that the attempt to restrain your diet will actually cause you to overeat later on due to being hungry, causing the diet to fail.

Crockett et al. suggested that if the individual precommitted to the diet, and took steps to avoid contact with unwanted substances (e.g. avoiding the shops that sell them), the diet is far more likely to work. They suggested that precommitment was a more effective self-control strategy than will-power or simply restraining your diet.

Answer: False

The restraint theory assumes that the failure of dieting is caused by the individual's free will (they have chosen to overeat despite trying to eat less). Therefore, it falls under the free-will side of the free-will versus determinism.

A limitation of the theory is that it ignores biological factors. Research has suggested that there are genetic mechanisms which exert influence on weight. For example, Kern et al. studied the levels of lipoprotein lipase (LPL), an enzyme, in participants and found that LPL levels rose after a decrease in weight. In addition, the fatter the person was to start with, the higher these levels were.

Answer: Lateral hypothalamus

Once the lateral hypothalamus (LH) is activated, the individual feels hungry, and so searches for food. Once the food has been eaten, it activates the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH), resulting in the feeling of satiation (fullness) and inhibits further eating.

This cycle is argued to control eating. There is a lot of research into these neural mechanisms. For example, Hetherington and Ranson (1942) found that damage to the VMH caused rats to overeat, leading to hyperphagia, while stimulation to the VMH inhibited eating. They concluded that because the VMH contains many glucose receptors, it signals the body to stop eating.

Answer: The individual will experience periods of vomiting

The periods of vomiting do not occur in anorexia nervosa, but are a characteristic of bulimia nervosa.

Did you know that 24 million people in the USA struggle with an eating disorder, such as bulimia and anorexia? Almost 50% of these people also meet the criteria for depression.

Answer: Fatty foods

Fatty foods are rich in calories, giving our ancestors more energy to run away from predators, hunt animals and gather berries. This would make them more likely to survive in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness (as a harsh environment), enabling them to pass on their genes to the next generation, implying that eating fatty foods is an adaptive behaviour.

This theory, therefore, suggests that we have evolved a preference to fatty foods that are rich in calories.

Answer: Bitter tasting food

Sandell and Breslin studied how bitter taste evolved as a defence mechanism to detect potentially harmful toxins in plants. This study suggested that the bitter taste was associated with poisonous food, so a development to detect bitter taste would make us less likely to eat them, and more likely to survive.

Answer: Perfectionism

Cockell et al. found that, compared to women with mood disorders and a control group, women with anorexia had higher levels of self-orientated perfectionism (striving to meet their own expectations), socially-prescribed perfectionism (striving to meet others' expectations), and non-disclosure imperfectionism (avoiding verbal admissions of perceived imperfections).

Answer: Dopamine explanation

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, and it is thought that disturbances in the levels of dopamine may lead to anorexia. Kaye et al. (2005) argued that increased brain activity in areas of the brain where dopamine plays a role in the interpretation of pleasure and harm alters the way that people respond to rewards.

It is suggested that dopamine could cause people to find it difficult to associate good feelings with 'pleasurable' items, such as food, meaning they eat less, resulting in anorexia.

Answer: Surbey (1987)

Surbey developed Wasser and Barash's theory, and argued that the desire to control weight in adolescent girls was adaptive as, by delaying the onset of sexual maturation, it would allow females to avoid giving birth at a time when conditions were not conducive to the offspring's survival. Based on observations that females in many species delay or suppress reproductivity when stressed or in poor conditions, anorexia nervosa is a distorted variant of an adaptive ability of females to alter the timing of reproduction when they feel unable to cope with the biological, emotional and social responsibilities of womanhood.