ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Eating Behavior
The Relationship of Benevolent Sexism and Disordered Eating in China: The Role of Appearance Comparison on Social Network Sites
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Psychology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
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This study focuses on disordered eating (DE), a critical mental health issue among university students. Specifically, it examines the relationship between benevolent sexism (BS) and DE, and explores the underlying psychological mechanisms. A questionnaire-based survey was conducted to investigate the association between BS and DE, as well as the mediating role of appearance comparison on social networking sites (SNSs) and the moderating role of gender. A sample of 2,000 Chinese college students completed the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory, subscales of the Eating Disorder Inventory, and the Social Network Site Appearance Comparison Scale. Using Hayes' Process Macro, this study tested both a mediation model (Model 4) and a moderated mediation model (Model 59). The results showed that BS was positively associated with both appearance comparison on SNSs (a = .038, p < .001) and DE (c = .091, p = .001). Appearance comparison on SNSs was positively associated with DE (b = 1.733, p < .001) and partially mediated the link between BS and DE (ab = .066, 95% CI [.04, .10]). Gender further moderated these associations: BS can directly predict DE among females (cfemale = .207, p < .001) but not among males (cmale = .033, p = .319), and the effect of appearance comparison on SNSs on DE was stronger for females (bfemale = 1.966, p < .001) than for males (bmale = 1.586, p < .001). Conditional indirect effects confirmed that the mediation pathway was significant for males (abmale = .070, 95% CI [.04, .11]) but not significant for females (abfemale = .051, 95% CI [-.01, .11]).
Keywords: benevolent sexism, Disordered eating, Appearance comparison, Social network site (SNS), Ambivalent sexism
Received: 17 Jun 2025; Accepted: 27 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xu and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Changkai Chen, cck@nju.edu.cn
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