Associations among family-of-origin food-related experiences, expectancies, and disordered eating.

Objective: The study reported here integrates research on family-of-origin learning experiences and adult eating/thinness expectancies in the study of risk for eating disordered behavior.

Method: A sample of women manifesting a wide range of eating disordered behaviors (n = 66) were compared in their retrospective reports of family learning, current eating and dieting expectancies, and current eating disordered behaviors.

Results: History of food-related teasing from friends and family, negative maternal modeling, and friends' criticism of eating all related to both adult disordered behavior and adult eating and thinness expectancies.

Reactive personality-environment transactions and adult developmental trajectories.

The possibility, which is based on the concept of reactive personality-environment transactions, that individuals learn different things from the same experience as a function of personality differences may help explain individual differences in adult developmental trajectories. In an analogue, longitudinal design, business students were taught about stock market investing, and they engaged in 5 practice investment sessions. Although all participants earned the same returns on their investments, they varied in the expectancies they formed about stock investing as a function of their personality status.