Psychosocial aspects of extremely obese women joining a diet group.

Fifty-eight women, desiring to lose at least 45 kg, participated in a diet group and completed a battery of personality inventories. Their scores differed significantly from normative data on several subscales of the personality inventories. As a group, these extremely obese women scored low on the Tennessee self-concept scales, particularly on the physical self-concept scale. On the Edwards personal preference schedule, they scored low on the deference, order, affiliation, nurturance, and endurance scales, and high on the dominance and heterosexuality scales. On the Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory, they scored high on the depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviate, and paranoia scales, and they scored low on the masculinity-feminity scale. The most striking finding was that these extremely obese women, who were not alcoholics, showed scores on alcoholism scales which are typical of an alcoholic population.