What Causes Eating Disorders? Psychological Factors
What causes eating disorders? Psychological factors - your personality, how you deal with things emotionally and psychologically - play a significant role in the cause of an eating disorder. Remember, however, that just because someone exhibits personality traits consistent with those found in someone with the symptoms of eating disorders, doesn't mean that person will definitely develop an eating disorder. There is no single cause of eating disorders. There are multiple causes of eating disorders. Someone with these personality traits may develop an eating disorder while another person with them won't.
Human Personality Traits
Researchers have identified what they call the "big five factors" that make up human personality. These traits exist on a continuum, meaning every person will have these aspects of their personality to a different degree. These personality traits all play a role in what causes eating disorders.
The Big Five Factors of Human Personality - known by the acronym OCEAN (or CANOE)
Openness - how curious and inventive you are versus how conservative and cautious you are. This factor takes into account whether you have a variety of life experiences, whether you are creative and have unusual ideas and can think outside the box, how appreciative you are of art and human emotion, and whether or not you are adventurous.
Conscientiousness - how organized and efficient you are versus how careless and easy-going you are. This factor takes into account whether you are self-disciplined, whether you are morally committed to things (your sense of duty), whether you strive to accomplish and achieve things, especially through planning (as opposed to doing things through spontaneity).
Extroversion - how energetic and outgoing you are versus how withdrawn and shy you are. This factor takes into account your energy level, whether you are social with other people (and how open you are to being social with others), how much self-confidence you have (surgency), and whether you are generally a positive (optimistic) or negative (pessimistic) person. Do you like to stand out in a crowd? Are you likely to assert yourself with others? Do other people view you as high energy or more reserved and quiet?
Agreeableness - how compassionate and friendly you are versus how outspoken and competitive you are. This factor takes into account what happens when you encounter difference. Are you likely to go along, understand where people are coming from, be cooperative? Or are you more likely to buck the system, become suspicious of others' motives and become hostile and antagonistic?
Neuroticism - how confident and secure you are versus how nervous and sensitive you are. This factor takes into account how you internalize emotions. When something comes along that challenges you, are you secure in your ability to do what you need to do (or feel how you feel or think what you think or say what you want to say)? Do you tend to get down when things are sad or not going your way? Do you often have negative emotions? Are you angry much of the time? How easily do you become angry?
What Causes Eating Disorders? How the Big Five can play out
Openness
People with eating disorders tend to be closed when it comes to experience, but open when it comes to intellect. Because of the rigidness of eating disorders, interests become diminished. What we once enjoyed we really don't enjoy anymore, one of the depression warning signs. And it's not that we don't want to enjoy things, it's just that the eating disorder takes up so much space in our lives, it makes it really hard to enjoy much of anything.
Intellectually, however, we tend to be open. We tend to be complex thinkers and we can be quite creative. The problem is externalizing that and putting it out in the world. That's where the closed experience thing comes in.
Conscientiousness
People with eating disorders tend to be extremely conscientious (in theory), even to a fault. There is an element of perfectionism (I mean, if you don't know that perfectionism is part of what causes eating disorders, then you definitely need to keep reading!) that falls in this factor - being meticulous and organized. We do tend to be quite conscientious, until the eating disorder really takes over. Once cognitive function begins to fail, it becomes nearly impossible to be conscientious to the level we once were. However, in the things we are still able to do, we will tend toward the organized and efficient as opposed to the careless and easy-going.
Extroversion
People with eating disorders again show a level of contradiction here. On one hand, when we're among a group of people, we could be considered outgoing and sociable. However, some would rather disappear into the wall than engage with a crowd. Also, internally, many people with eating disorders would rather be alone because we perpetually feel as if we don't belong ... as if no one "gets" us.
Agreeableness
Being agreeable could be part of what causes eating disorders, mainly because people with eating disorders tend to be very agreeable, even to the point of not having an opinion at all because we are afraid of disappointing someone. Because there is almost no sense of self when it comes to people with eating disorders, it's really hard to know what you like and want. It is much easier to just be agreeable, compliant, trusting of others. Agreeableness also has elements of empathy and sympathy. Because we tend to be highly in tune to other people's emotions, we can be extremely empathetic and sympathetic to others.
Neuroticism
People with eating disorders tend to be either extremely emotional or have no emotion whatsoever. Because we tend to internalize emotions, sometimes it is just too painful to express them. Other times, the littlest thing may set us off so that emotions are flying all over the place. We also tend to be nervous or anxious.
There are other psychological factors that go into answering the question, what causes eating disorders? Please continue reading for more on what causes eating disorders, including a biggie, self-esteem.
