Body Objectification, Social Pressure, and Disordered Eating Behavior in College Women: The Role of Sorority Membership

Social pressure to conform to the thin ideal is believed to play a decisive role in the development of eating disorders. In this field study at a college with only sophomore rush, 99 sorority women, 80 nonsorority women past their first year, and 86 first-year women completed three subscales of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychology of women quarterly 2007-12, Vol.31 (4), p.394-400
Main Authors: Basow, Susan A., Foran, Kelly A., Bookwala, Jamila
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acceptance
At Risk Persons
Body
Body image
Body Weight
College Students
Correlation
Eating Disorders
Females
Feminism
Feminist psychology
Fraternities & sororities
Gender
Gender studies
Human body
Measures (Individuals)
Peer Influence
Peer relationships
Psychological effects
Psychology
Scores
Self Concept
Self image
Social Influences
Social pressure
Sororities
Students
Women
Womens studies
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Summary:Social pressure to conform to the thin ideal is believed to play a decisive role in the development of eating disorders. In this field study at a college with only sophomore rush, 99 sorority women, 80 nonsorority women past their first year, and 86 first-year women completed three subscales of the Eating Disorders Inventory-2 (Garner, 1991), the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale (McKinley & Hyde, 1996), and a measure of peer social pressure. It was hypothesized that women belonging to sororities as well as those who intended to join would score higher than nonsorority and first-year women with no intention to join on these measures of disordered eating, body objectification, and social pressure. It also was predicted that the amount of time spent living in a sorority house as well as degree of social pressure would correlate positively with higher scores on body objectification and disordered eating. Results supported nearly all hypotheses, suggesting both that sororities attract at-risk women and that living in a sorority house is associated with increased likelihood of disordered eating.
ISSN:0361-6843
1471-6402
DOI:10.1111/j.1471-6402.2007.00388.x