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Body Use and Reference Group Impact: With Whom Do We Compare Our Bodies?

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Abstract

Fifty U.S. Olympic speedskating team members, 50 professional models, and 80 college students completed the Body Esteem Scale (BES: Franzoi & Shields, 1984) and indicated for each of the 35 BES items whether when evaluating themselves they most frequently use as a comparison standard same-sex people in general, same-sex professional models, or elite same-sex athletes. Consistent with social comparison theory that people seek similar others as comparison targets, college students were more likely than Olympic athletes or professional models to compare themselves to people in the general population, athletes were more likely than students or models to compare themselves to elite athletes, and models tended to be more likely than students or athletes to compare themselves to elite models. As hypothesized, college women more frequently than college men compared themselves to professional models when evaluating body aspects associated with weight concern and sexual attractiveness, and the more female skaters’ compared themselves to models, the more their negative body attitudes associated with weight concern increased and the more interested they were in changing weight-related body aspects.

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Notes

  1. The researchers acknowledge that there is a possibility that American young adults’ body perceptions have shifted somewhat since the mid-1990s when these data were collected. However, a recent cross-sectional analysis of body attitudes among selected samples of American young adults from 1983 through 2001 does not suggest that significant changes have occurred in gender-related body attitudes (Cash, Morrow, Hrabosky, & Perry, 2004). In addition, there is ample evidence that the gender-related body attitude issues focused on in the present study are still as highly relevant today as they were in the previous decade (e.g., see the 2005 special issue on body image in Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology). Finally, the primary focus of the present study was on how individuals attend to similar versus dissimilar reference groups when evaluating their bodies, a social psychological process that is not likely to be affected by cultural trends that may have occurred during the past decade. Thus, although the current data set was collected in the mid-1990s, there is little reason to believe that it is “outdated” regarding the current study’s theoretical focus.

  2. Because our interest was in exploring gender differences in comparing oneself to same-sex models when evaluating body aspects related to women’s sexual attractiveness and weight concern, we used the body items that comprise the women’s sexual attractiveness and weight concern subscales in constructing the model comparison measures for both women and men.

  3. Because our interest was in exploring gender differences in comparing oneself to same-sex athletes when evaluating body aspects related to men’s physical condition and upper body strength, we used the body items that comprise the men’s physical condition and upper body strength subscales in constructing the athletes comparison measures for both men and women.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, 53233-1881, USA

    Stephen L. Franzoi & Jeffrey R. Klaiber

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  1. Stephen L. Franzoi
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Correspondence to Stephen L. Franzoi.

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Franzoi, S.L., Klaiber, J.R. Body Use and Reference Group Impact: With Whom Do We Compare Our Bodies?. Sex Roles 56, 205–214 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-006-9162-4

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