Publications by authors named "Wesley R Barnhart"

Article Synopsis
  • Empirical research indicates strong links between teasing about weight and muscularity and eating behaviors in men, but most studies have overlooked the impact of different types of teasing.
  • This study analyzed 596 Chinese adult men to explore how four teasing categories—high weight, low weight, high muscularity, and low muscularity—affect eating disorder symptoms and intuitive eating through various statistical approaches.
  • Results revealed that the "Low Teasing" group experienced the least eating disorder issues and the most intuitive eating, while the "High Weight-High Muscularity" group had the most severe eating disorder symptoms, emphasizing the need for targeted interventions for men facing different teasing experiences.
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This Virtual Issue of the International Journal of Eating Disorders honors the legacy of the late Dr. Michael Strober in the eating disorders and child psychiatry fields. Having served as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Eating Disorders from 1983 to 2012, Dr.

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Objective: This study examined cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of intermittent fasting (IF) engagement with body mass index (BMI), both thinness-oriented and muscularity-oriented eating disorder (ED) psychopathology, eating-related psychosocial impairment, and intuitive eating.

Method: Using a longitudinal design, 491 Chinese adults (M = 30.33 years, SD = 7.

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Prior research demonstrates positive associations between muscularity dissatisfaction and an array of negative health outcomes, including muscularity-oriented disordered eating, eating-related psychosocial impairment, and psychological distress. However, muscularity dissatisfaction differs by gender and is not always linked to these outcomes, indicating the existence of moderators of these associations. We proposed and examined muscularity bias internalization (MBI) as a moderator of these associations.

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General early-life bullying victimization has been used as an early-life marker of eating and body image disturbances and poor psychosocial well-being later in life. We expand existing research in this area to Chinese sexual minority (SM) men, a vulnerable and under-researched subgroup, by considering associations of general early-life bullying victimization with current eating and body image disturbances and poor psychosocial well-being. We assessed demographics, general early-life bullying victimization, past appearance teasing, current thinness- and muscularity-oriented eating and body image disturbances, and current psychosocial well-being in Chinese SM men (N = 433).

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This study, which is a longitudinal extension of previous cross-sectional studies in Chinese and American college students and general adults (Dixit, He, Whited, Ellis, & Zickgraf, 2023; He, Chen, Wu, Niu, & Fan, 2020; Xu et al., 2024), used latent profile and latent transition analyses to investigate negative emotional eating patterns and the stability of these patterns in 1462 Chinese adolescents (41% boys, aged 11-17 years) at baseline and 18 months later. We also explored baseline demographic predictors of negative emotional eating patterns and the associations between these patterns and outcome variables measured 18 months later.

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Objective: The present longitudinal study examined sex-specific, symptom-level relationships among emotion regulation (ER), interpersonal problems (IP), and eating disorder (ED) psychopathology in a large sample of Chinese adolescents.

Method: Data were from a project with four waves of data collection (N = 1540; 710 boys and 830 girls) at 6-month intervals over 18 months. Questionnaires assessed ED psychopathology, ER, and IP at each wave of data collection.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the relationship between body image flexibility and body dissatisfaction among Chinese adolescents over 18 months, addressing gaps in existing research focused primarily on Western contexts.
  • It reveals that for boys, higher body image flexibility at the start is linked to less dissatisfaction with body fat later, while for girls, dissatisfaction with body fat and muscularity initially impacts body image flexibility in the future.
  • Overall, the findings highlight the complex, bi-directional relationship between body image flexibility and dissatisfaction in both genders, with no significant differences found between boys and girls.
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Objective: Empirical research and theory support the interaction of executive functions (e.g., inhibitory control, working memory) and emotion regulation in guiding goal-oriented behavior; however, applications to eating pathology (e.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigated how gratitude influences body appreciation and intuitive eating among 957 young Chinese women, building on previous models from American and Japanese populations.
  • - Findings revealed that higher gratitude is linked to lower reliance on appearance and others' approval, as well as improved body appreciation and intuitive eating behaviors.
  • - The modified model fits well in the Chinese context and suggests that interventions fostering gratitude could effectively enhance body appreciation and intuitive eating; future research should focus on long-term effects and culturally relevant adaptations.
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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates weight bias internalization (WBI) and its negative health effects specifically in Chinese gender-diverse individuals, a group that has been understudied compared to cisgender individuals from Western societies.
  • A survey of 410 participants showed a significant correlation between higher WBI and increased body shame, body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and poor physical and mental health.
  • The findings suggest that WBI is a critical factor linked to eating and body image issues, indicating a need for more research to understand its implications in this population.
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In addition to describing sexual partner preferences, sexual self-labels in gay and bisexual (henceforth, sexual minority) men, such as top, bottom, and versatile, are associated with psychological characteristics (e.g., gendered personality traits).

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Using culture-based approaches, Monocello et al. revealed that young Korean men generally shared the same perceptions of fatness, including three categories ("too thin," "balanced," and "too fat"). The "balanced" category was most consistent with local South Korean culture, and the "too fat" category was associated with higher body dissatisfaction and disordered eating.

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Previous research identified four patterns of negative emotional eating in American and Chinese university students and proposed future directions (e.g., exploring potential differences in emotion regulation across patterns and replicating the patterns in a general, non-student population).

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Objectives: Previous research suggests potential moderating roles of dispositional mindfulness and body image flexibility in the association between body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. However, relevant research is mainly conducted on adult women from Western countries, and limited evidence exists for adolescent samples, especially from non-Western contexts (e.g.

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Screening for eating disorders (EDs) is an essential part of the prevention and intervention of EDs. Traditional screening methods mostly rely on predefined cutoff scores which have limitations of generalizability and may produce biased results when the cutoff scores are used in populations where the instruments or cutoff scores have not been validated. Compared to the traditional cutoff score approach, the diagnostic classification modeling (DCM) approach can provide psychometric and classification information simultaneously and has been used for diagnosing mental disorders.

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Extensive research exists on the association between self-reported emotional eating (EE) and disordered eating (DE) behaviors. Heterogeneity exists by type (e.g.

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Extensions of objectification theory to pregnant women are few and continued research is needed to better understand the psychological consequences of significant changes to physical appearance during pregnancy. Specific interests in this area include functionality appreciation which may be particularly relevant to pregnancy. Research in this area is also lacking representation of non-Western cultural contexts.

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This study described muscularity teasing in both men and women and explored its associations with eating and body image disturbances in adults from China. A total of 900 Chinese adults (50% women) were recruited online. Correlation and regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationships between muscularity teasing and a battery of measures on eating and body image disturbances.

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The Intuitive Eating Scale-2 (IES-2) is a measure of intuitive eating behaviors that has been extensively validated, with traditional latent variable modeling approaches, in youth and adults from many different populations, including college students in China. However, there is still a lack of research on the psychometric properties of the IES-2 in adults from the Chinese general population. Moreover, psychometric network analysis, as a complement to traditional latent variable modeling approaches, has not been used for examining the psychometric properties of the IES-2.

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The current study translated the Appearance Schemas Inventory-Revised (ASI-R) into Chinese (Mandarin) and examined its psychometric properties in Chinese adult women and men. Sample 1 included 400 women and 400 men to examine the factor structure of the ASI-R with exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Sample 2 involved 300 women and 300 men, and the EFA-derived factor structures in Sample 1 of the ASI-R were examined with exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM), bifactor ESEM (B-ESEM), and bifactor ESEM with correlated uniqueness for negatively worded items (B-ESEM-CU) for both women and men.

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Objective: Relationships exist between food addiction symptoms, weight bias internalization, and psychological distress, yet previous research is primarily cross-sectional with adults from Western contexts. We examined the prospective relationships between food addiction symptoms, weight bias internalization, and psychological distress in Chinese adolescents.

Methods: Over three time points (Time 1, baseline; Time 2, 6-months; Time 3, 12-months) spanning 1 year, we examined cross-sectional and bi-directional relationships between food addiction symptoms, weight bias internalization, and psychological distress in Chinese adolescents (N = 589; aged 14-18 years at baseline).

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The Muscularity Bias Internalization Scale (MBIS) captures an individual's endorsement of stereotypical beliefs about muscularity and engagement in self-stigmatizing evaluations about their muscularity. The MBIS has been validated in Chinese men and Lebanese men and women, showing strong internal consistency reliability and construct validity. Because muscularity-related body image concerns are present in Chinese women, there is a need for research to validate the MBIS in Chinese women.

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Picky eating, which occurs in emerging adulthood and is associated with psychological distress and quality of life, has historically been conceptualized as unidimensional despite research suggesting it is a multifaceted construct. An undergraduate sample ( = 509; = 19.96).

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