Grad Student Research:
Elizabeth Fitzgerald
Elizabeth’s research has focused on studying relationships between eating pathology and psychological factors, including cognitive, emotional, and personality factors. Her master’s thesis used longitudinal data to examine associations between perfectionism, maturity fears, and interpersonal distrust and eating pathology in college-age individuals. Associations were re-examined at 10-, 20-, and 30-year follow-up to determine how psychological factors changed in prognostic value for eating pathology across time. Currently Elizabeth is examining how trait levels of cognitive and emotional constructs, such as body dissatisfaction, predict real-time state-level cognitive and emotional responses to eating in women with bulimia nervosa and purging disorder.
Madeline Wick
Madeline's master's thesis, titled "Posting edited photos of the self: Increasing eating disorder risk or harmless behavior?" utilized an experimental design to determine that posting edited photos causes increased weight/shape concerns. Furthermore, results showed that posting unedited photos reinforces urges to exercise and restrict food intake, as well as increases anxiety, and editing photos without posting causes an immediate decrease in weight/shape concerns and a delayed decrease in sadness.
Sarrah Ali
Sarrah is currently working on projects exploring the relationship between deficits in self-concept clarity and eating disorder severity, as well as how ethnoracial status and its intersection with gender predict eating disorder pathology across adult development.