Eating attitudes and striving to avoid inferiority.

Abstract

Vulnerability to some psychopathologies may be related to feeling the need to compete, strive, and achieve in order to avoid inferiority and rejection. This study explored “insecure striving”, (relating to a perceived need to strive to avoid inferiority and its consequence, rejection) in relationship to eating attitudes and appearance anxiety in students. Eating attitudes and appearance anxiety were associated with judgments of inferiority, insecure striving to avoid inferiority, and fear of losing out and were negatively associated to secure non-striving (social acceptance). Further work exploring the way people understand and react to the competitive dynamics of their social groups may illuminate important processes linked to eating disorders.