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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 4, 447-458 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167205284005
© 2006 Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Associations Between Appearance-Related Self-Discrepancies and Young Women's and Men's Affect, Body Satisfaction, and Emotional Eating: A Comparison of Fixed-Item and Participant-Generated Self-Discrepancies

Emma Halliwell

University of the West of England

Helga Dittmar

University of Sussex

This study examines the associations between appearancerelated, actual-ideal self-discrepancies—from both own and romantic partner's standpoints—and negative affect, body satisfaction, and eating behavior. It extends previous research through studying both genders and the romantic partner standpoint, but its main novel contribution is a systematic comparison between idiographic, participant-generated, and nomothetic, fixed-item measures of appearance-related selfdiscrepancies. The findings show that these measures cannot be, and should not be, treated as equivalent. The idiographic measures were superior in predicting outcome variables when considering the own standpoint. Nomothetic measures did demonstrate some gender-specific associations, but only from the romantic partner standpoint, and only for women. These findings can be explained with respect to the assessment of accessible, versus available, self-discrepancies. Implications for selfdiscrepancy and body image theory and research are discussed.

Key Words: self-discrepancies • self-discrepancy measurement • body image • gender differences • self-standpoints


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