Understanding the Impact of Thin Media Models on Women's Body-Focused Affect: The Roles of Thin-Ideal Internalization and Weight-Related Self-Discrepancy Activation in Experimental Exposure Effects

By H. Dittmar, Emma Halliwell, Emma Stirling. 2009

166 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Previous experimental research demonstrates that exposure to ultra-thin media models has negative effects on many women's body image, but neglects underlying psychological processes. We develop and test a moderated mediation model with internalization of the thin beauty ideal as moderator, and activation of weight-related self-discrepancies as mediating mechanism through which exposure leads to heightened body-focused negative affect. We demonstrate that thin-internalizers' higher negative affect after exposure to advertisements featuring thin models is fully mediated by weight-related self-discrepancy activation (N = 87; Study 1). These findings replicate in a larger sample of women (N = 155; Study 2) and hold regardless of whether or not thin models' body size was emphasized during exposure. Implications for interventions are discussed.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Marketing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/661fd1ab16a4297caaf6c25d2c89b65584f7d211

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. D. Sánchez-Carracedo
2. Gemma López-Guimerà
3. J. Fauquet
4. Michael Levine
5. M. Tiggemann
6. H. Dittmar

In Marketing

1. D. Sánchez-Carracedo
2. Gemma López-Guimerà
3. Michael Levine
4. J. Fauquet

Citations in the corpus

• How do "Body Perfect" Ideals In tHe MedIa Have a negatIve IMPact on Body IMage and BeHavIors? factors and Processes related to self and IdentIty (2009, unknown): “…a powerful vulnerability factor for negative media effects (Levine & Murnen, 2009, this issue), and demonstrates that it is linked with processing media images in such a way that weight-related self-discrepancies are activated with negative emotional consequences (Dittmar et al., 2009, this issue).”
• Influence of Mass Media on Body Image and Eating Disordered Attitudes and Behaviors in Females: A Review of Effects and Processes (2010, background): “As Dittmar et al. (2009) indicate, the results of their study of ‘‘internalizers’’ and weightrelated self-discrepancies can be interpreted in terms of schema activation.”