Examining an elaborated sociocultural model of disordered eating among college women: The roles of social comparison and body surveillance

• An elaborated sociocultural model of disordered eating was examined cross-sectionally.
• Mediators of the thin-ideal internalization-body dissatisfaction relation were tested.
• Social comparison emerged as a significant specific mediator of this relation.
• Body surveillance did not emerge as a significant specific mediator.
• Social comparison accounted for unique variance in prospective eating pathology.

Social comparison (i.e., body, eating, exercise) and body surveillance were tested as mediators of the thin-ideal internalization-body dissatisfaction relationship in the context of an elaborated sociocultural model of disordered eating. Participants were 219 college women who completed two questionnaire sessions 3 months apart. The cross-sectional elaborated sociocultural model (i.e., including social comparison and body surveillance as mediators of the thin-ideal internalization-body dissatisfaction relation) provided a good fit to the data, and the total indirect effect from thin-ideal internalization to body dissatisfaction through the mediators was significant. Social comparison emerged as a significant specific mediator while body surveillance did not. The mediation model did not hold prospectively; however, social comparison accounted for unique variance in body dissatisfaction and disordered eating 3 months later. Results suggest that thin-ideal internalization may not be “automatically” associated with body dissatisfaction and that it may be especially important to target comparison in prevention and intervention efforts.