Exam (elaborations) (16 mark) Eating - Successes + Failures Dieting- AQA Psychology for A Level Year 2 Student
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AQA Psychology for A Level Year 2
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Discuss two or more explanations for the success and failure of dieting (16 marks)
Throughout psychology there have been many different explanations in regards to the success
and prevention of a failed diet. Dieting is a conscious cognitive as well as physical way of losing
weight or “tone up”. One explanation given would be the spiral mode, this is when low self-
esteem based on dissatisfaction leads to an individual wanting to diet. This is more effective in a
negative sense as it causes personal deficiency for example, low self-esteem. Another example
would be the ironic process theory. This introduces the limitation of food in feeding the satiety
levels. Forbidden food becomes salient, leading to an outbreak of excessive eating, affecting
the cognitive processing of a concussed diet. All of this is included in the reiteration of restraint,
limiting food eaten. The disinhibition which includes eating more calories even when dieting and
the Boundary Model, creating the “what the hell” effect All these are in relation to the successes
and failures of dieting.
One success of the Spiral Model is that it proposes several ways in dieting involving a "breaking
out". This is supported by Heatherton and Polivy who point out that the key issue is to prevent
lowering of self-esteem and avoid diet failure e.g., people who diet to avoid putting on weight
rather than lose it are less likely to go through disinhibited eating because their self-esteem may
be higher. A suggested way of complimenting the success of the model is to give up dieting
altogether. However, a limitation for this strength would be that the coming of low self-esteem
was not introduced in the implication of motivation in the diet. Thus, supported by Joel et al, the
disinhibited eaters who give up eating often turn to substance abuse as a way to reduce their
happiness, eg, weed and LED. Nethertheless, the model is successful in understanding the
importance of esteem to stop a diet.
Another explanation in regards to the failures of dieting would be the support of the ironic
process theory. This is evidenced by Adriaanese et al 2011, who investigated snacking
behaviour. Their participants were female students who were trying to cut down on their intake
of unhealthy snacks such as chocolate and chips. The girls limit their diet in scaling based on
negative emotions e.g., not eating chocolate when sad. findings have shown an ironic rebound
effect. The relation between being sad and chocolate makes a link to memory, including the
dopamine levels of sweet food. This shows that there is a relation between behavioral effects.
The data had shown that they ate unhealthy more item and consumed more calories than the
control group which confirms that it is difficult to suppress thoughts of eating once they become
accessible in memory. Therefore, this supports the failures of dieting as cognitive processes are
generalized to snacking behavior showing that if one were to think of themselves to diet, it
would lead to failure.
Furthermore, The Effects for ironic processes may be minimal in determining a successful diet.
Although there is evidence showing the operation of ironic process in dieting, it is also a
limitation as its unclear on how far they can account for the success and failures of dieting the
effects are relatively small - Wegner et al as it may be exaggerated in "snapshot" laboratory
experiments and less relevant to real life attempts in losing weight. Therefore, this shows that
there is a limited validity in explaining the factors that essentially lead to a successful diet and
other factors may be more significant like the spiral model.
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