Claire E. Adams
Claire Adams is the first author, with Mark Leary, of "Promoting self-compassionate attitudes toward eating among restrictive and guilty eaters", published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology in 2007. The study tested whether being kinder to yourself after breaking a diet makes you eat less or more.
Who they are
This site draws on the 2007 paper only. No affiliation has been verified, and none is given.
This page records only what the papers and their published records state. Biography beyond the cited work is not given here.
Key papers
Promoting self-compassionate attitudes toward eating among restrictive and guilty eaters (2007), with Mark Leary. College women ate an unhealthy food as a preload. Some were then given a short self-compassion induction. Among highly restrictive eaters, the induction reduced distress and reduced how much they ate afterwards.
Key ideas
The central idea is that harshness after a slip can feed the slip. Restrictive eaters who were helped to treat a lapse kindly ate less afterwards, which fits the older account of the abstinence violation effect, in which guilt and a sense of failure drive the next lapse. The finding sits in some tension with a 2012 smoking study in which self-blame was not the problem, and the two together suggest that confidence, rather than blame alone, may be what a slip damages.
Sources
- Adams, C. E., & Leary, M. R. (2007). Promoting self-compassionate attitudes toward eating among restrictive and guilty eaters. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 26(10), 1120-1144. doi:10.1521/jscp.2007.26.10.1120