A Cross-Cultural Study on Own-Ethnicity Effects in the Relationship Between Body Dissatisfaction and Attentional Bias Towards Thin Bodies

Studies suggest that an attentional bias to thin bodies is common amongst those with high levels of body dissatisfaction, which is a risk factor for, and symptom of, eating disorders. However, these studies have predominantly been conducted in Western countries with body stimuli involving images of White people. It is not known whether this relationship generalises to women from non-Western countries, or whether it is influenced by ethnicity-congruency between body stimuli and participants. In a preregistered cross-cultural study, we recruited 150 Malaysian Chinese women and 150 White Australian women. To measure attentional bias to thin bodies, participants completed a dot probe task which presented images of women who self-identified their ethnicity as East Asian or as White Australian. Contrary to previous findings, we found no evidence for an association between body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to thin bodies. This lack of association was not affected by participant ethnicity (Malaysian Chinese versus White Australian) or ethnicity congruency between participants and body stimuli (own-ethnicity versus other-ethnicity). These results suggest that either the relationship between body dissatisfaction and attentional bias to thin bodies is not robust, or the dot probe task may not be a reliable measure of attentional bias to body size.