Anita Jansen, Professor of Experimental Clinical Psychology
Anita’s research is inspired by clinical practice. Her ambition is to discover and unravel cognitive and behavioural mechanisms that cause, maintain, or reduce eating and weight disorders. Jansen likes to study complex issues from a surprising perspective. She translates research findings from the lab to the clinic, developing new clinical interventions that specifically target these mechanisms that perpetuate mental disorders. Next to her research into eating and weight disorders, she is the scientific director of the New Science of Mental Disorders project funded by the Dutch Ministry of Science and the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Publications that I’m most proud of
Can you learn to starve yourself? Inducing food avoidance in the laboratory. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2023.
In this study we tested experimentally whether healthy females can learn to refuse the eating of tasty foods. Indeed, they can. It appears to be quite easy to learn to avoid the eating of reinforcing foods. We consider this to be an interesting experimental model for the study of anorexia nervosa.
Avoidance in Anorexia Nervosa: towards a research agenda. Physiology & Behavior, 2021.
In this theoretical paper, we review what is known about anxiety and avoidance in anorexia nervosa, and we outline our ideas on how our field can move forward. Though anorexia nervosa is considered an eating disorder, fears and avoidance behaviours are the main characteristics. We think current treatments of anorexia nervosa can learn a lot of the developments in anxiety research – standing on the shoulders of giants, you know.
Eating disorders need more experimental psychopathology. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2016.
The scientific study of eating disorders has expanded dramatically over the past few decades, and provided significant understanding of eating disorders and their treatments. Those significant advances notwithstanding, there is scant knowledge about key processes that are crucial to clinical improvement. The lack of understanding mechanisms that cause, maintain and change eating disorders, currently is the biggest problem facing the science of eating disorders. It hampers the development of really effective interventions that could be fine-tuned to target the mechanisms of change and, therefore, the development of more effective treatments. It is argued in this paper that the science of eating disorders and eating disorder treatment could benefit tremendously from pure experimental studies into its mechanisms of change.
