Abstract
Mainstream media’s promotion of dangerously thin female images likely lowers self-image satisfaction and contributes to pathological body concerns and disordered eating among women. We tested upward and downward social-comparison effects on self-evaluations by exposing 145 Spanish women to images of thin (upward) or overweight (downward) models. We also tested whether explicitly asking or not asking participants to compare themselves with the models would moderate social comparison effects. Exposure to thin models deteriorated body image while increasing body dissatisfaction and anxiety. Conversely, exposure to overweight models improved body image and decreased body dissatisfaction but it did not affect anxiety. Whether participants were asked to compare themselves to the models explicitly or implicitly had no effect on the participants’ responses. Furthermore, pre-existing body image concerns were not associated with the pre-to-post exposure effects. We propose that increasing the representation of normal weight and overweight women in media advertisements could help to neutralize or at least reduce the negative impact of media’s practice to idealize thin and overly thin women as symbols of female beauty.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
References
Bessenoff, G. R. (2006). Can the media affect us? Social comparison, self-discrepancy, and the thin ideal. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 30(3), 239–251. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2006.00292.x.
Blanton, H., Buunk, B. P., Gibbons, F. X., & Kuyper, H. (1999). When better-than-others compare upward: Choice of comparison and comparative evaluation as independent predictors of academic performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(3), 420–430. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.76.3.420.
Bonafini, B. A., & Pozzilli, P. (2011). Body weight and beauty: The changing face of the ideal female body weight. Obesity Reviews, 12(1), 62–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2010.00754.x.
Cattarin, J. A., Thompson, J. K., Thomas, C., & Williams, R. (2000). Body image, mood, and televised images of attractiveness: The role of social comparison. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 220–239. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2000.19.2.220.
Cohen, J. (1992). A power primer. Psychological Bulletin, 112(1), 155–159. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.112.1.155.
Cooper, P. J., Taylor, M. J., Cooper, Z., & Fairbum, C. G. (1987). The development and validation of the body shape questionnaire. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 6, 485–494. https://doi.org/10.1002/1098-108X(198707)6:4<485::AID-EAT2260060405>3.0.CO;2-O.
Corning, A. F., Krumm, A. J., & Smitham, L. A. (2006). Differential social comparison processes in women with and without eating disorder symptoms. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 53(3), 338–349. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.53.3.338.
Díaz-Ferrer, S., Rodríguez-Ruiz, S., Ortega-Roldán, B., Moreno-Domínguez, S., & Fernández-Santaella, M. C. (2015). Testing the efficacy of pure versus guided mirror exposure in women with bulimia nervosa: A combination of neuroendocrine and psychological indices. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 48, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2015.01.003.
Dittmar, H., & Howard, S. (2004). Thin-ideal internalization and social comparison tendency as moderators of media models' impact on women's body-focused anxiety. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 23, 768–791. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.23.6.768.54799.
Dohnt, H., & Tiggemann, M. (2006). The contribution of peer and media influences to the development of body satisfaction and self-esteem in young girls: A prospective study. Developmental Psychology, 42, 929–936. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.42.5.929.
Eisinga, R., Te Grotenhuis, M., & Pelzer, B. (2013). The reliability of a two-item scale: Pearson, Cronbach, or spearman-Brown? International Journal of Public Health, 58(4), 637–642. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-012-0416-3.
Fallon, A. E., & Rozin, P. (1985). Sex differences in perceptions of desirable body shape. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 94(1), 102–105. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.94.1.102.
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117–140. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872675400700202.
Franzoi, S. L., Vasquez, K., Sparapani, E., Frost, K., Martin, J., & Aebly, M. (2012). Exploring body comparison tendencies: Women are self-critical whereas men are self-hopeful. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 36, 99–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684311427028.
Gilbert, D. T., Giesler, R. B., & Morris, K. A. (1995). When comparisons arise. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 227–236. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.69.2.227.
Gleaves, D. H., Cepeda-Benito, A., Williams, T. L., Cororve, M. B., Fernandez, M. D. C., & Vila, J. (2000). Body image preferences of self and others: A comparison of Spanish and American male and female college students. Eating Disorders, 8(4), 269–282. https://doi.org/10.1080/10640260008251236.
Green, S. B. (1991). How many subjects does it take to do a regression analysis. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 26(3), 499–510. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327906mbr2603_7.
Gruder, C. L. (1971). Determinants of social comparison choices. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 7(5), 473–489. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(71)90010-2.
Hamilton, E. A., Mintz, L., & Kashubeck-West, S. (2007). Predictors of media effects on body dissatisfaction in European American women. Sex Roles, 56, 397–402. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-006-9178-9.
Hargreaves, D., & Tiggemann, M. (2002). The effect of television commercials on mood and body dissatisfaction: The role of appearance-schema activation. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 21, 287–308. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.21.3.287.22532.
Hargreaves, D., & Tiggemann, M. (2003). The effect of “thin ideal” television commercials on body dissatisfaction and schema activation during early adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 32(5), 367–373. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024974015581.
Harper, B., & Tiggemann, M. (2008). The effect of thin ideal media images on women’s self-objectification, mood, and body image. Sex Roles, 58, 649–657. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-007-9379-x.
Harrison, K., & Cantor, J. (1997). The relationship between media consumption and eating disorders. Journal of Communication, 47(1), 40–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1997.tb02692.x.
Hayes, A. F. (2012). PROCESS: A versatile computational tool for observed variable mediation, moderation, and conditional process modeling [White paper]. Retrieved from http://www.afhayes.com/public/process2012.pdf.
Hayes, A. F., & Montoya, A. K. (2017). A tutorial on testing, visualizing, and probing an interaction involving a multicategorical variable in linear regression analysis. Communication Methods and Measures, 11(1), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2016.1271116.
Heinberg, L., & Thompson, J. K. (1995). Body image and televised images of thinness and attractiveness: A controlled laboratory investigation. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 14, 325–338. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.1995.14.4.325.
Hofschire, L. J., & Greenberg, B. S. (2002). Media's impact on adolescents' body dissatisfaction. In J. D. Brown, J. R. Steele, & K. W. Walsh-Childers (Eds.), Sexual teens, sexual media: Investigating media's influence on adolescent sexuality (pp. 125–152). New Jersey: Erlbaum. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=G9iRAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA125&dq=Media%27s+impact+on+adolescents%27+body+dissatisfaction&ots=t_xoDOIWt4&sig=snShZsqo7poFR8IeifU8W9AITXU#v=onepage&q=Media's%20impact%20on%20adolescents'%20body%20dissatisfaction&f=false
Holmstrom, A. J. (2004). The effects of the media on body image: A meta-analysis. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 48, 196–217. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4802_3.
Irving, L. M. (1990). Mirror images: Effects of the standard of beauty on the self-and body-esteem of women exhibiting varying levels of bulimic symptoms. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 9, 230–242. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.1990.9.2.230.
Jansen, A., Smeets, T., Martijn, C., & Nederkoorn, C. (2006). I see what you see: The lack of a self-serving body-image bias in eating disorders. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 45(1), 123–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2008.01.011.
Jansen, A., Bollen, D., Tuschen-Caffier, B., Roefs, A., Tanghe, A., & Braet, C. (2008). Mirror exposure reduces body dissatisfaction and anxiety in obese adolescents: A pilot study. Appetite, 51(1), 214–217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2008.01.011.
Kaiser, H. E. (1974). An index of factorial simplicity. Psychometrika, 39, 31–36. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02291575.
Leahey, T. M., & Crowther, J. H. (2008). An ecological momentary assessment of comparison target as a moderator of the effects of appearance-focused social comparisons. Body Image, 5(3), 307–311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2008.03.002.
Lentillon-Kaestner, V., Berchtold, A., Rousseau, A., & Ferrand, C. (2014). Validity and reliability of the French versions of the body shape questionnaire. Journal of Personality Assessment, 96(4), 471–477. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2013.843537.
Lin, L. F., & Kulik, J. A. (2002). Social comparison and women’s body satisfaction. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 24, 115–123. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15324834BASP2402_4.
Lindner, M., Rudorf, S., Birg, R., Falk, A., Weber, B., & Fliessbach, K. (2014). Neural patterns underlying social comparisons of personal performance. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10(4), 569–576. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsu087.
MacCallum, R. C. (2009). Factor analysis. In R. E. Millsap & A. Maydeu-Olivares (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of quantitative methods in psychology (pp. 123–147). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9780857020994.n6.
Mendes, W. B., Blascovich, J., Major, B., & Seery, M. (2001). Challenge and threat responses during downward and upward social comparisons. European Journal of Social Psychology, 31(5), 477–497. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.80.
Milkie, M. A. (1999). Social comparisons, reflected appraisals, and mass media: The impact of pervasive beauty images on black and white girls' self-concepts. Social Psychology Quarterly, 62, 190–210. https://doi.org/10.2307/2695857.
Mills, J. S., Polivy, J., Herman, C. P., & Tiggemann, M. (2002). Effects of exposure to thin media images: Evidence of self-enhancement among restrained eaters. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(12), 1687–1699. https://doi.org/10.1177/014616702237650.
Moreno, S., Warren, C. W., Rodríguez, S., Fernández, M. C., & Cepeda-Benito, A. (2009). Food cravings discriminate between anorexia and bulimia nervosa: Implications for “success” versus “failure” in dietary restraint. Appetite, 52, 588–594. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2009.01.011.
Moreno-Domínguez, S., Rodríguez-Ruiz, S., Fernández-Santaella, M. C., Jansen, A., & Tuschen-Caffier, B. (2012). Pure versus guided mirror exposure to reduce body dissatisfaction: A preliminary study with university women. Body Image, 9(2), 285–288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2011.12.001.
Myers, T. A., & Crowther, J. H. (2009). Social comparison as a predictor of body dissatisfaction: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 118(4), 683–698. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016763.
Nichols, A. L., & Maner, J. K. (2008). The good-subject effect: Investigating participant demand characteristics. The Journal of General Psychology, 135(2), 151–166. https://doi.org/10.3200/GENP.135.2.151-166.
Pate, J. E., Pumariega, A. J., Hester, C., & Garner, D. M. (1992). Cross-cultural patterns in eating disorders: A review. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 31(5), 802–809. https://doi.org/10.1097/00004583-199209000-00005.
Record, K. L., & Austin, S. B. (2016). “Paris thin”: A call to regulate life-threatening starvation of runway models in the US fashion industry. American Journal of Public Health, 106(2), 205–206. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302950.
Rosen, J. C., Jones, A., Ramirez, E., & Waxman, S. (1996). Body shape questionnaire: Studies of validity and reliability. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 20(3), 315–319. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1098-108X(199611)20:3<315::AID-EAT11>3.0.CO;2-Z.
Servián-Franco, F., Moreno-Domínguez, S., & del Paso, G. A. R. (2015). Body dissatisfaction and mirror exposure: Evidence for a dissociation between self-report and physiological responses in highly body-dissatisfied women. PLoS One, 10(4), e0122737. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0122737.
Stevens, J. P. (2012). Applied multivariate statistics for the social sciences. New York: Routledge. https://books.google.com/books?id=QMGjsqLQlmUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Applied+multivariate+statistics+for+the+social+sciences&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZqv2xkobbAhVxUd8KHc5uBLoQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=Applied%20multivariate%20statistics%20for%20the%20social%20sciences&f=false.
Stice, E. (2002). Risk and maintenance factors for eating pathology: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 128(5), 825–848. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.128.5.825.
Tantleff-Dunn, S., & Gokee, J. L. (2002). Interpersonal influences on body image development. In T. F. Cash & T. Pruzinsky (Eds.), Body image: A handbook of theory, research, and clinical practice (pp. 108–116). New York: Guilford Press.
Tavakol, M., & Dennick, R. (2011). Making sense of Cronbach’s alpha. International Journal of Medical Education, 2, 53–55. https://doi.org/10.5116/ijme.4dfb.8dfd.
Taylor, S. E., & Lobel, M. (1989). Social comparison activity under threat: Downward evaluation and upward contacts. Psychological Review, 96(4), 569–575. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.96.4.569.
Thompson, J. K., & Stice, E. (2001). Thin-ideal internalization: Mounting evidence for a new risk factor for body image disturbance and eating pathology. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10, 181–183. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00144.
Thompson, J. K., Heinberg, L., & Tantleff-Dunn, S. (1991). The physical appearance comparison scale. The Behavior Therapist, 14, 174.
Tiggemann, M. (2006). The role of media exposure in adolescent girls' body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness: Prospective results. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 25(5), 523–541. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2006.25.5.523.
Tiggemann, M., & McGill, B. (2004). The role of social comparison in the effect of magazine advertisements on women’s mood and body dissatisfaction. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 23, 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.23.1.23.26991.
Tiggemann, M., & Slater, A. (2004). Thin ideals in music television: A source of social comparison and body dissatisfaction. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 35, 48–58. https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.10214.
Tiggemann, M., Gardiner, M., & Slater, A. (2000). "I would rather be a size 10 than have straight A's": A focus group study of adolescent girls' wish to be thinner. Journal of Adolescence, 23, 645–659. https://doi.org/10.1006/jado.2000.0350.
Tucci, S., & Peters, J. (2008). Media influences on body satisfaction in female students. Psicothema, 20(4), 521–524. http://www.psicothema.com/psicothema.asp?ID=3517.
van Breukelen, G. J. P. (2013). ANCOVA versus CHANGE from baseline in nonrandomized studies: The difference. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 48(6), 895–922. https://doi.org/10.1080/00273171.2013.831743.
VanVoorhis, C. W., & Morgan, B. L. (2007). Understanding power and rules of thumb for determining sample sizes. Tutorials in Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 3(2), 43–50. https://doi.org/10.20982/tqmp.03.2.p043.
Want, S. C. (2009). Meta-analytic moderators of experimental exposure to media portrayals of women on female appearance satisfaction: Social comparisons as automatic processes. Body Image, 6, 257–269. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2009.07.008.
Want, S. C. (2014). Three questions regarding the ecological validity of experimental research on the impact of viewing thin-ideal media images. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 36(1), 27–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2013.856783.
Want, S. C., Botres, A., Vahedi, Z., & Middleton, J. A. (2015). On the cognitive (in) efficiency of social comparisons with media images. Sex Roles, 73(11–12), 519–532. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0538-1.
Warren, C. S., Cepeda-Benito, A., Gleaves, D.H., Moreno, S., Rodríguez, S., Fernandez, M. C.,…. Pearson, C. A. (2008). English & Spanish versions of the body shape questionnaire: Measurement equivalence across ethnicity and clinical status. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 41, 265–273. https://doi.org/10.1002/eat.20492.
Wills, T. A. (1991). Similarity and self-esteem in downward comparison. In J. Suls & T. A. Wills (Eds.), Social comparison: Contemporary theory and research (pp. 51–78). Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc..
Zabinski, M. F., Calfas, K. J., Gehrman, C. A., Wilfley, D. E., & Sallis, J. F. (2001). Effects of a physical activity intervention on body image in university seniors: Project GRAD. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 23(4), 247–252. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15324796ABM2304_3.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
The present research was conducted within the ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association (APA) and thereby followed APA’s principles of ethical and professional conduct. Funding for this research was provided by the public universities that employ the authors, the authors have no conflict of interest to declare (financial or non-financial), and all participants gave informed consent prior to their participation.
Electronic Supplementary Material
ESM 1
(DOCX 1127 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Moreno-Domínguez, S., Servián-Franco, F., Reyes del Paso, G.A. et al. Images of Thin and Plus-Size Models Produce Opposite Effects on Women’s Body Image, Body Dissatisfaction, and Anxiety. Sex Roles 80, 607–616 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-018-0951-3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-018-0951-3
Keywords
- Body image
- Social comparison
- Mass media
- Media exposure
- Eating disorders