Dietary restraint and negative affect as mediators of body dissatisfactionand bulimic behavior in adolescent girls and boys

Stice's dual pathway model of dietary restraint and negative affect was exa mined in both adolescent girls and boys. Self-report treasures assessing bo dy dissatisfaction, dietary restraint, negative affect and bulimic behavior were administered to 267 girls and 199 boys aged between 12 and 16 years. The findings for the girls were consistent with Stice's model, in that they indicated that both dietary restraint and negative affect mediated the rel ationship between body dissatisfaction and bulimic behavior. For the boys w ho desired a thinner body size, only negative affect was found to mediate t he relationship between body dissatisfaction and bulimic behavior. On the o ther hand, for boys who desired a larger body size, both body dissatisfacti on and dietary restraint were found to exert an independent effect on bulim ic behavior. As boys can aspire to two contrasting and seemingly opposite b ody size ideals, the findings highlight that the relationship between body dissatisfaction, dietary restraint, negative affect and bulimic behavior ar e more complex in males than in females. Further research using longitudina l designs is needed in order to test the directional and bidirectional natu re of the observed interrelationships. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All r ights reserved.