Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are becoming a major problem throughout the world'. Discuss to what extend psychological theories can explain the trend.

Cultural relativism is the view that there cannot be one definition of abnormality because every society is different and what may seem strange to one person may seem normal to another. This can be related to eating disorders because within certain cultures, specifically western societies at the moment, eating disorders have become more common due to the media conveying a message to the public that being thin and pretty equals success and fame. The media influences the public through operant conditioning and Bandura’s social learning theory. Operant conditioning is learning through the consequence of actions and learning a response through reward, punishment and reinforcement. Bandura said that when an individual watches (modelling) another person being reinforced and/or rewarded, the individual wants to repeat that behaviour themselves (imitate) so they get the same reaction (vicarious reinforcement). This can be applied to the media and eating disorders, as when someone watches TV and reads magazines, the pages are full of pretty and thin famous people. The individual then associates being pretty and skinny with being famous, rich and happy (classical conditioning) and therefore they want to be like the people in the magazines so they get the same rewards/reinforcements (operant conditioning). This is the dual process theory as it contains both classical and operant conditioning). This then results in the individual developing an eating disorder in their attempt to be as thin as the famous people. This theory explains how eating disorders are obtained and maintained within society and it also explains how eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are becoming a major problem throughout the world. Lee et al said that because there is less exposure to role models in Hong Kong, Chinese women are less aware of dieting techniques such as self-induced vomiting. In Hong Kong the population are part of a collectivist society and therefore their focus is more on family values than weight. It can also be suggested that their genes have something to do with being naturally slim anyway. This backs up the social learning theory, which explains the increase in eating disorders in some countries but not all. A limitation of this model is that this theory does not explain the increase in eating disorders around the world, it only explains the increase in some countries.

The cognitive model explains how an individual develops certain distorted perceptions of what is the ideal weight in their society. Their distorted thoughts of what is ‘cool’ and ‘pretty’ are developed through media and peer pressure. TV, films, magazines and newspapers play a big part in everyone’s life in society today. We are constantly seeing pictures of famous people who are extremely thin. This gives an individual the distorted thought that being very thin is good. The individual then strives to be thin and their friends feel pressured to do the same through peer pressure. This model explains the increase of eating disorders and has been very influential in terms of treatment. However, a limitation of this approach is that the distorted thoughts could be related to the effect of the eating disorder, rather than the cause.

The diathesis stress model explains eating disorders in terms of genetics (diathesis) and environmental triggers (stress). This means that you need a genetic predisposition and an environmental trigger to develop an eating disorder, explaining why some people develop eating disorders, but not all. It is probably best to use this approach as it fits in with the social learning theory (stress), which then leads to the cognitive model, and it explains cultural relativism and statistical infrequency (genetics, some cultures have different genetics).