![]() ![]() Individuals with anorexia nervosa (AN) who do not report fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, so called non-fat phobic anorexia nervosa (NFP-AN Lee et al., 1993), seem to occur with a wide geographic distribution in both western and non-western populations and exhibit a consistent profile of low scores on measures of eating disorder pathology ( Dalle Grave et al., 2008 Becker et al., 2009 Wildes et al., 2013). The utility of CA as a tool to measure fear of weight gain - and potentially other psychopathological constructs -requires further confirmation. As expected, in FP-AN the explicitly endorsed fear of weight gain was confirmed by the marked preference for weight maintenance compared to HC, while for NFP-AN explicit and implicit measures diverged, indicating that against their self-report they may experience at least some fear of weight gain. Correlation between explicitly assessed drive for thinness and CA score was low. ![]() Individuals with FP-AN showed a significant lower preference for weight gain versus weight maintenance than HC ( p = 0.011, η p 2 = 0.107). Relative importance and preference scores for various life aspects, including appearance/shape and weight were assessed in women with fat-phobic AN (FP-AN, n = 30), NFP-AN ( n = 7), and healthy controls ( n = 29). Therefore, we aimed to measure fear of weight gain using a novel method in clinical psychology, the conjoint analysis (CA). As self-reports are susceptible to bias, other methods are needed to confirm the existence of the subtype in order to provide adapted treatment. This is of relevance as a subgroup of individuals with AN denies fear of weight gain as the reason for restrictive eating but still remain at a very low weight. With the introduction of new diagnostic criteria in DSM-5, fear of weight gain no longer represents a sine qua non-criterion for the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa (AN). 3Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.2Department of Psychology, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany.1Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, Universität zu Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany. ![]()
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