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Seeking a perfect body look: feeding the pathogenic impact of shame?

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Abstract

Shame feelings often lead individuals to adopt compensatory mechanisms, such as the minimization of the public display or disclosure of mistakes and the active promotion of perfect qualities, conceptualized as perfectionistic self-presentation. Although perfectionism is considered a central characteristic of disordered eating, the investigation on the specific domain of body image-related perfectionistic self-presentation and on its relationship with psychopathology is still scarce. The main aim of the present study was exploring the moderator effect of body image-related perfectionistic self-presentation on the associations of shame with depressive symptomatology, and with eating psychopathology, in a sample of 487 women. Results revealed that body image-related perfectionistic self-presentation showed a significant moderator effect on the relationships of external shame with depressive symptomatology, and with eating psychopathology severity, exacerbating shame’s impact on these psychopathological indices. These findings appear to offer important clinical and investigational implications, highlighting the maladaptive character of such body image-focused strategies.

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  1. CINEICC, Faculdade de Psicologia e Ciências da Educação, Cognitive - Behavioral Research Center, Universidade de Coimbra, Rua do Colégio Novo, Apartado 6153, 3001-802, Coimbra, Portugal

    Joana Marta-Simões & Cláudia Ferreira

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  1. Joana Marta-Simões
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  2. Cláudia Ferreira
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Correspondence to Joana Marta-Simões.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Marta-Simões, J., Ferreira, C. Seeking a perfect body look: feeding the pathogenic impact of shame?. Eat Weight Disord 21, 477–485 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40519-015-0240-x

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