“Our Friends and How We Make Them”: How Disordered Eating Tendencies Could Contribute to Friendships Based in Either Competition or Mutual Success

Previous research has found that higher levels of disordered eating tendencies were correlated with friendship struggles. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of friendships in college students with disordered eating tendencies. Participants responded to an online survey measuring their body dissatisfaction and disordered eating tendencies (n = 135). Approximately half of the participants with the highest scores were invited to a follow-up study where they were asked to bring a close friend (n = 17 pairs). Then, these individuals completed questionnaires that measured disordered eating tendencies, friendship quality, competitiveness, and codependency. The researcher hypothesized that there would be a relationship between an individual’s disordered eating tendencies and their friend’s disordered eating tendencies. The researcher also hypothesized that competitiveness would predict lower friendship quality and codependence would predict higher perceived friendship quality. Results showed that higher levels of competitiveness predicted poorer friendship quality, adjusted R2 = .12, F(1,32) = 4.50, p = .04. For every one unit increase in friendship, an individual’s competitiveness score went down by 0.19 (SE = 0.09), t(34) = −2.12, p = .04. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of friendships in which one or more individuals have disordered eating tendencies, which can help to inform clinical treatment of disordered eating.