BODY-IMAGE - A COGNITIVE SELF-SCHEMA CONSTRUCT

Body image has been a useful construct for understanding eating disord ers. In that capacity, body image has been defined in many ways: One c oncept of body image is as an internalized view of one's appearance th at drives behavior and influences information processing. This cogniti ve schema definition of body image was tested in a series of studies. Other recent studies have investigated cognitive processes with body i mage information, but the, have focused on weight-related body image. A combination of Higgins self-discrepancy theory and Markus' self-sche ma theory were used to describe a modem interpretation of body image a s an internalized self-representation Both of these theories predict s pecific information processing consequences of an organized cognitive representation. In turn, these consequences confirm the existence of t hat representation. Several studies were conducted to test a specific schema-like view of body image. In Study I body image schema variables were correlated with traditional measures of body image. In Study 2 s ubjects exposed to schema relevant contents showed information process ing consequences consistent with self-representation theory. Finally, in Study 3 instructional set was shown to modify the schema activation effect. These effects give evidence of body image schema and yield li mited information about the nature of that representation.