Current Projects

The APPEAR team collaborates on a variety of ongoing projects regarding body image and eating concerns.

Individual prevention

  • Evaluation of an online prevention program among college students
  • Evaluation of an online program to increase media literacy related to social media

Macro-level prevention

  • Examining how certain advertising can be less deleterious to body image
  • Examining how regulation of model employment can have a positive impact on their health
  • Examining how food environment is related to eating disorder risk

Risk & protective factors

  • Examining various possible influences on body image
    • Increasing emphasis on muscularity
    • Racial/ethnic identities
    • Gender identity
    • Sexual orientation
    • Intersectional identities
    • Motherhood
    • Lifespan (mid-life, older life)
  • Examining how network analyses can contribute to our understanding of the way that thoughts and behaviors come together in eating disorders and body image concerns.
  • The internet as a new form of media & sociocultural pressure
  • Healthism and Love Your Body discourses
    • “Healthy weight” pressure
    • Controllability beliefs through diet and exercise
    • Use of personal technologies
    • Bodily and psychic regulation
  • Positive body image
  • Healthy eating
  • Mindfulness and acceptance

Cognitive characteristics of body image and eating concerns through computer tasks

  • Decision making and learning
  • Attention bias and re-attentive processing
  • Memory
  • Rumination

Comorbidity between eating disorder symptoms and medical issues

  • Gastrointestinal disorders
  • Food allergies