Developing a model linking self-reported nature exposure and positive body image: A study protocol for the body image in nature survey (BINS)

Body Image ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 50-57
Author(s):  
Viren Swami ◽  
Ulrich S. Tran ◽  
Stefan Stieger ◽  
Martin Voracek
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Claudia G. Levenig ◽  
Michael Kellmann ◽  
Jens Kleinert ◽  
Johanna Belz ◽  
Tobias Hesselmann ◽  
...  

Context: Low back pain (LBP) is a serious health problem, both in the general population as well as in athletes. Research has shown that psychosocial aspects, such as dysfunctional pain responses, play a significant role in the chronification of LBP. Recent research supports the relevance of the multidisciplinary concept of body image in the interpretation of LBP. Objective: To examine the differences in 2 psychosocial aspects, body image and pain responses, between athletes and nonathletes with LBP. Design: Cross-sectional design. Setting: The questionnaires were distributed in the course of LBP treatment. Participants: Data from 163 athletes (mean age = 28.69 [9.6] y) and 75 nonathletes (mean age = 39.34 [12.63] y) were collected. Interventions: Data were collected by questionnaires assessing body image, pain behavior, training activity, and LBP. Main Outcome Measures: To examine group differences between athletes and nonathletes regarding body image and pain behavior, the authors performed 2-way analyses of variance with Bonferroni post hoc tests. Results: The results showed (1) a significant main effect regarding pain responses and body image, showing that participants with eustress endurance or adaptive pain behavior revealed a more positive body image in both groups compared with participants with distress endurance or fear-avoidance behavior, and (2) a significant main effect for the factor group in the body image dimension of physical efficacy, indicating a more positive body image for athletes. Conclusion: These results suggest that considering multiple risk factors for LBP, such as body image and dysfunctional pain behavior, as well as subgrouping, might be valuable for research and for broadening therapy options.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
K Alysse Bailey ◽  
Kimberley L Gammage ◽  
Cathy van Ingen

This article highlights the use and importance of action research in creating a new positive body image program. The purpose of the larger action research project was to design, test, and implement a positive body image program by working with a core group of diverse stakeholders from an exercise facility. Stakeholders included older adults (aged 55+), people with physical disabilities, and those with cardiovascular disease or risk factors, populations rarely included in the body image literature, particularly in program design. The resulting program was built to teach members of the facility about body image (e.g. its definition, causes, and influences), positive body image, and how to manage their own body image experiences and be critical of the Western beauty ideal. The project is outlined with emphasis on the development of the program along with the researcher’s reflexive notes and participant feedback. We also highlight the strengths and challenges of using action research in the development of a positive body image program with suggestions to improve this process for future action researchers. This research highlights the importance of using action research in order to engage participants who are not typically involved in the knowledge production process of body image program development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-383
Author(s):  
Ksenia N. Belogai

The present paper deals with the body image formed in women during the period of middle adulthood, or midlife. The research featured Russian-speaking women, who demonstrated a global trend in that they expressed mainly negative ideas about their body and a standard dissatisfaction with their appearance. The women were concerned with their body weight, shape, and functional characteristics. In middle adulthood, body image is determined, to a large extent, by the exclusively female bodily experience, i.e. menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding. For instance, women with a positive attitude towards their own body were less likely to have abortions or miscarriages, complications during pregnancy and childbirth. In addition, they expressed more pronounced positive feelings associated with the movement of the fetus in the womb. In general, positive body image was found to form in those pregnant women who moved on from evaluating their appearance to evaluating the functionality of their body. The data also showed that the body image in women aged 25–40 depended on the body mass index: women with a lower body mass index had a more positive body image.


Author(s):  
Zali Yager

Body image programming has been implemented in schools to varying degrees of success, but to date, no programs specific to positive body image have been developed and evaluated. This chapter reviews programs that have been effective in improving body image to determine whether the elements of positive body image and embodiment have been present in program content. Some elements of positive body image, such as media literacy and critiquing stereotypes, were present in all five programs conducted with children (<12 years), and all eight programs conducted with adolescents (13–18 years). Additionally, agency (through activism and voice) and broadly conceptualizing beauty were often present in children’s programs, and resisting objectification and agency were often present in adolescent programs. Only one program included the Body Appreciation Scale as a measure of program effectiveness. Potential future directions for programs are discussed, including the incorporation of positive movement, mindfulness, and self-compassion.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Débora Godoy-Izquierdo ◽  
Isabel Díaz

In a social and sports world dominated by weight-centred beliefs and highly exigent and gendered athletic and beauty body standards, the vulnerability for eating pathology, i.e., disordered eating and eating disorders (EDs), is elevated among women athletes. The aim of this study was to explore body image facets and ED risk among female athletes in masculinised sports such as soccer. Forty-five federated amateur female soccer players from Spain participated in this study, voluntarily complying with an extensive evaluation protocol on attitudes towards body and appearance and eating practises. The participants overall reported self-representations of their bodies that corresponded to their reality as athletes, but their body ideals were also more demanding in terms of low fat and muscularity, in association with the functionality of their body and the physical demands of their athletic activity. Despite having a fairly high positive body image and body satisfaction, they also expressed negative attitudes towards their bodies. Around 2 out of 10 players were at risk of suffering from an ED. Players with negative attitudes towards their bodies had an odd 12 times likely to develop an ED compared to those with lower self-devaluation, after adjusting for BMI and body perceptions (OR = 12.3, p &lt; 0.01). On the contrary, players who appreciate their bodies and hold a positive body image had an odd 83% lower to suffer from eating pathology, after adjusting for BMI and body satisfaction (OR = 0.17, p &lt; 0.05). Our findings support the healthy and protective role of positive body image in sports contexts. Body attitudes should be addressed in preventive and therapeutic efforts for reducing the prevalence of EDs in women's sports, within both a “negative” and a “positive” paradigm of body image.


Author(s):  
K. N. Belogai ◽  
◽  
Yu. V. Borisenko ◽  
N. A. Bugrova ◽  
◽  
...  

Positive body image is a construct that has actively been formed in the last two decades. Its appearance in the psychological discourse was a kind of response to the spreading of the practice of studying the body image from the point of view of pathology in the context of clinical studies of the second half of the XX century. Currently, the world has accumulated some experience in studying a positive body image, which is especially relevant in the pandemic era. The paper analyzes contemporary foreign publications considering a positive body image published in English-language journals on developmental, clinical, and social psychology from 2001 to 2021. The research allows monitoring the transformation of the studied construct in the context of humanistic and positive psychology that considers the body image both through the concept of appearance and through such definition as body functionality. The emphasis on the functionality within the analysis of the embodiment problematics allowed shifting the focus of the psychologists’ attention from the strategies of object attitude to a body to the strategies of taking care of a body as a value. The authors highlight the key areas of studying a positive body image at the current stage of development of science: the characteristics of a structure and components of the phenomenon under the study; the search for the sociocultural, family, and individual-psychological factors influencing the formation of positive body image; the assessment of the efficiency of prevention and correction programs aimed at the promotion of healthy body image; the analysis of positive body image as a recourse of a personality in the pandemic epoch.


Author(s):  
Niva Piran

Positive body image entails appreciating, loving, respecting, nurturing, protecting, and seeing beauty in the body regardless of its consistency with media appearance ideals. Embodiment reflects a connection between the mind and the body, which have a continual dialectical relationship with the world, and includes positive body connection, body agency and functionality, attuned self-care, positive experiences with body desires, and living in the body as a subjective rather than objectified site. This 38-chapter handbook reviews current knowledge of positive body image and embodiment, as well as future directions for work in these areas, which will be useful for mental health researchers, practitioners, advocates, and activists. Nine chapters review constructs that represent the positive ways we live in our bodies: experiences of embodiment, body appreciation, body functionality, body image flexibility, broad conceptualization of beauty, mindful attunement, intuitive eating, attunement with exercise, and attuned sexuality. Fifteen chapters speak to how we can cultivate positive body image and embodiment by expanding physical freedom (mindful movement, personal safety, connection to agency and desire); mental freedom (resisting objectification, stigma, media images, and gender-related molds); and social power (within families, peers, support systems, and online contexts). Last, 14 chapters address novel ways we can enhance positive body image and embodiment through individual and social interventions that focus on compassion, acceptance, emotional regulation, mindfulness, social justice, movement (yoga), cognitive dissonance, media literacy, and public health and policy initiatives.


2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 617-639
Author(s):  
Renee Engeln ◽  
Megan N. Imundo

Introduction: Messages encouraging women to love their bodies are common elements of positive body image movements, but there are theoretical reasons to suspect that such messages may backfire. Methods: In a sample of 293 college women, we tested the impact of mentally repeating the affirmation “I love my body” on body satisfaction. We prompted participants to think either “I love my body” (affirmation condition) or “I am [age] years old” (control condition) while they completed a five-minute writing task. Results: Relative to the control, the affirmation condition led to significantly lower body satisfaction. Additionally, 53% of affirmation condition participants counterargued the body affirmation by writing something negative about their appearance; only 6% in the control condition wrote a negative appearance comment. Discussion: Results suggest that some messages intended to promote positive body image have the potential to decrease women's body satisfaction, in part because they prompt women to think of flaws in their appearance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-28
Author(s):  
K.N. Belogai ◽  
I.S. Morozova ◽  
E.S. Kagan ◽  
M.I. Gubanova ◽  
Yu.V. Borisenko

The paper presents the analysis of the positive body image formation among young women, characterizes determinants of female body image and describes the results of an experimental study. The purpose of the study was to test the possibility of developing a positive body image by the means of psychological training. The study involved women aged 18—20 (N=64). The methods included questionnaires and interviews. The results show that the body image of young women was associated with unrealistic external standards, and there is a certain ambivalence to them. On the one hand, the indicators of the component of the body image which included information and evaluation are quite high in youth, but body dissatisfaction is also high and a significant part of the girls rely on external standards in assessing attractiveness. In the course of the formative experiment, it was found that the development of positive body image is promoted by personal psychological training aimed at reducing weight and body shape concerns, expanding internalized stereotypes about the body and increasing the body’s worthiness (differences in the body image components before and after training are significant at p≤0.05).


Author(s):  
Iryna Ivanova

This chapter describes the application of emotion-focused therapy (EFT) in enhancing embodiment and positive body image in individuals with eating disorders and body dissatisfaction. It provides an overview of emotion regulation and dysregulation and highlights possible links between emotion regulation deficits, negative body image, and disordered eating. It reviews the application of EFT in the treatment of emotion dysregulation and describes EFT interventions that help enhance positive embodiment and positive body image. The chapter also reviews outcome research on the application of EFT in healing bodily and emotional disruptions in adults and adolescents through individual and group psychotherapy. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future directions to advance the application of EFT to transform body shame into more attuned and empowering ways to inhabit the body.


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