Faced with one's fear: Attentional bias in anorexia nervosa and healthy individuals upon confrontation with an obese body stimulus in an eye-tracking paradigm.

The attentional bias to one's own subjectively unattractive body parts might represent a mechanism maintaining body image disturbance in women in general. This attentional bias is even stronger when women with AN are confronted with an obese stimulus, highlighting a potential mental preoccupation with being fat or weight gain and a behavior distinct for the disorder.