The Female Competition Stress Test: Effects on Disordered Eating Beyond Adolescence

Abstract

A common belief is that social pressure for thinness is directly responsible for both a desire for a thin physique in women as well as its pathological expression in eating disorders. Our understanding of such behavior may be illuminated by an evolutionary perspective that sees it as not just the product of social pressure, but as an exaggerated expression of behavior that may have once been adaptive. The reproductive suppression hypothesis suggests that natural selection shaped a mechanism for adjusting female reproduction to socioecological conditions by altering the amount of body fat. In modern Western culture, social and ecological cues, which would have signaled the need for temporary postponement of reproduction in ancestral environments, may now be experienced to an unprecedented intensity and duration. The Female-Female Competition Stress Test (FCST) is a measure of stress from adolescent female-female competition over status and over male attention. Based on the adaptive reproductive suppression model, this stress is likely to be associated with anorexic type behavior. This study replicates earlier work on this in a post-adolescent sample as well as extending the model to examine the relationship between female competition stress and disordered eating in an older adult (pre and post-menopausal) population. Results indicated that female competition stress scores predicted greater disordered attitudes toward eating as well as disordered eating behavior. While these effects decreased with age, they did not disappear and, in fact, female competition stress scores were elevated in postmenopausal women.