Greenwald and co-workers developed The implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure implicit automatic concept-attribute associations. Evidences have suggested that Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and Bulimia Nervosa (BN) were characterized by “Ideal Thin” construct.

The aim of this study was the evaluation, at an implicit level, of Ideal Thin construct in a sample of Eating Disorders (ED) patients.

An “Ideal thin” Implicit Association Tests (Ideal thin IAT) has been modeled, to evaluate the implicit ideal thin in ED patients compared with an healthy control group. IAT test has been administered to a sample composed by 17 AN patients, 14 BN patients, 17 Binge Eating patients (BED) and 32 healthy controls (HC). The target categories, were “OVERWEIGHT / UNDERWEIGHT” and “POSITIVE / NEGATIVE”. Stimuli included pictures of overweight and normal weight models and positive/negative words. A positive IAT effect underlines an implicit tendency to associate the category “UNDERWEIGHT” with negative attributes, instead a negative IAT effect suggest an implicit tendency to associate the same category with positive attributes.

Results showed no significant difference between HC and clinical groups in implicit “Ideal Thin construct”. All groups showed positive IAT effect. No correlations between implicit attitude and clinical variables were found.

Results show a common implicit tendency generalized in the sample to positively judge underweight. This implicit tendency was stronger in patients with Anorexia Nervosa (0,30), than patents with Bulimia Nervosa (0,41), than Healthy Control (0,42), followed by patients with BED (0,56).