Discuss Explanations for the Success and Failure of Dieting (8 & 16 marks)

People Diet in order to get rid of body dissatisfaction and to change their body shape, but often fail for a number of different reasons.

One Reason why diets fail is Denial. When people know they are not allowed to eat something they try to supress al thoughts of it, however the more they try not to think about it, the more they do think about it therefore wanting to eat more than they usually do. Wegner (1994) called it the ‘Theory of Ironic Processes of Mental Control’ and says that it can change a person’s cognitive state which can cause them to over react towards ‘forbidden foods’.

Wegner et al (1987) carried out a study to support the fact the supressing thoughts makes you think about them more where he told one group of participants to think a white bear and one group not to. They then had to ring a bell every time they thought about the white bear. He found that those who were not allowed to think of the white bear thought about it a lot more than those who were allowed to think of it which is exactly what the theory suggested.  This would show how diets fail because when people are stuck to a strict diet they will try not to think about other food but by doing so think about it more and therefore eat more and fail the diet.

Keys et al (1950) also conducted a study to support the ‘Theory of Ironic Processes of Mental Control’   where he studied 36 conscientious objectors to the Korean War, none of which were dieters. He gave them half of their usual food intake for 12 weeks and found that although on average they lost 25% of their starting body weight, they became obsessed with food and when allowed to eat normally again many of the participants became binge eaters. This supports the theory as it shows that after not being allowed to eat what food they wanted their cognitive state and attitude towards food changed and they became obsessed with it. It also shows why diets would fail due to the Theory of Ironic Processes of Mental Control because when people are on diets they are restricted in what they can and cannot eat and therefore may become obsessed with the food they are not allowed to eat making it even harder to resist often resulting in the eating of it and the failure of the diet.

However Keys study only used 36 people and only Koreans which is not a representative sample of the population therefore meaning it cannot be generalized to everyone. This makes the study lack cultural and population validity. Also this study was done over 60 years ago and is therefore very out of date meaning it is likely to lack temporal validity as todays attitudes to food and lifestyles are very different.

Redden (2008) suggested that one way to make a diet succeed would be to pay more attention to what we are actually eating. His theory says that people are likely to enjoy and experience less every time they experience it and therefore people tend to give up on diets as it becomes repetitive and boring. He suggested that if we actually focus in detail on what we are eating rather than the fact it is just another salad you can make it different each time and therefore more enjoyable making it easier to stick to.

Redden supported his own theory by giving 135 people 22 jelly beans each, one at a time. One group was shown general information about the jelly bean (eg. Bean 7 etc.) and the other group saw more detailed flavour information (eg. Cherry flavoured bean 7 etc.). It was found that the participants who saw the general information got bored of eating the jelly beans much more quickly than those who saw the detailed flavoured information who found the task a lot more enjoyable. This supports the idea of detail as the people who saw the food as ‘just another jelly bean’ got bored a lot more easily. This would show why diets fail as often people think about the food they are allowed to eat as ‘just another…’ which makes them bored of it quicker and therefore want to eat other food more.

Redden’s study has good reliability as it was done in lab setting and in a controlled environment therefore lowering the extraneous variables and making it easily replicable by others meaning that Redden himself or others can back up his findings.

Both Denial and Detail as explanations for the success and failure of dieting can be said to be reductionist as they are both very simple reasons on why a diet would succeed or fail and both fail to take into account other factors such as biological explanations. However the other factors have been forgotten about so that the success and failure of dieting can be looked at specifically and this is often needed when researching all science. Because of this these theories should not be looked at too much in isolation but in addition to other theories or as part of a more well-rounded approach such as one including social learning theory which says that people learn their behaviour through the observation of others and would disagree that diets fail due to our own thought processes but due to what we have learnt from others.