A prospective study on the reciprocal influence between personality and attitudes, behaviors, and psychological characteristics salient in eating disorders in a sample of non-clinical adolescents

Eating disorders are mostly likely to occur for the first time in adolescence. Delineating vulnerable personality profiles of unhealthy conditions helps prevent their onset and development. This study investigated a non-clinical sample of 142 adolescents and how some theoretically salient individual differences in personality contribute to predict changes in behaviors, attitudes and psychological characteristics that are clinically significant in eating disorders (ED). The results from cross-lagged pattern analyses supported the influence of depression, obsessiveness, and self-esteem in the trajectories favoring the development of psychological characteristics, such as ineffectiveness and interoceptive awareness, which are salient in the ED risk process. Results also confirmed that BMI (Body Mass Index), perfectionism, and body dissatisfaction predict increases in dysfunctional concerns with weight control and food consumption. Empirical support for an impact of ED-relevant variables on personality self-views emerged as well. Trajectories linking ED and personality in relation to sex differences and permeability to transitory psychological conditions in adolescence were also confirmed.