Confalonieri, L.1, 3, 4 , Ruggiero, G.M.1 Alighieri, S.2, Sacco, M.,1 Cattaneo, S.1 1Studi Cognitivi, Milan 2 Studi Cognitivi, Modena 3 Department of Human Sciences “Riccardo Massa”, University of Milan Bicocca, Milan 4 Mental Health Department, A.O. “Guido Salvini”, Garbagnate M., Italy Eating Disorder as illusory compensation to the sense of lack of control and obsession for a self-esteem perceived as perfectionistically inadequate; this illusory compensation gets displaced onto controlling eating and body shape (Fairburn, Shafran, & Cooper, 1999). Association between perfectionism and eating disorders, mediated by low perception of control and low-self esteem Mainly verified by correlational studies using questionnaires (Sassaroli, Gallucci, & Ruggiero, 2008; Sassaroli & Ruggiero, 2010)

1. INTUITIVE HEURISTIC BINDING PERFECTIONISM, CONTROL AND BODY SHAPE BELIEFS Confalonieri, L. 1, 3, 4 , Ruggiero, G.M. 1 Alighieri, S. 2 , Sacco, M., 1 Cattaneo, S. 1 1 Studi Cognitivi, Milan 2 Studi Cognitivi, Modena 3 Department of Human Sciences “Riccardo Massa”, University of Milan Bicocca, Milan 4 Mental Health Department, A.O. “Guido Salvini”, Garbagnate M., Italy

2. 03/01/12 L. Confalonieri THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK One of the constraint of human cognitive functioning is categorization and assessment of probability that certain token (events, features, exemplars) belong to a type/category Extentional rational formal reasoning based on laws of probability : e.g. Conjunction rule : P (A&B) < P (B) (Kyburg, 1983; Zadeh, 1978) Intuitive heuristic reasoning violation of the conjunction rule and representativeness heuristic : “ the probability of an event is evaluated by of the degree of correspondence between an instance (token) and a category (type)”; Tversky & Kahneman, 1983

6. 03/01/12 L. Confalonieri GOAL and HYPOTHESIS Goal: Verify the existence of intuitive heuristics binding pathologic perfectionism, beliefs on body shape and control exerted in everyday experiential domain/situations Hypothesis: We hypothesized that prototypes of perfectionist and controlling personality would be associated with higher probability to body-shape belief of thinness than to overweight body shape belief (heuristic content) This heuristic content originates from intuitive heuristic cognitive processes more than from formal extensional reasoning

14. 03/01/12 L. Confalonieri [email_address]