Muscle and fat aftereffects and the role of gender: Implications for body image disturbance

Brooks, Kevin R.; Keen, Edwina; Sturman, Daniel; Mond, Jonathan; Stevenson, Richard J.; Stephen, Ian D.

doi:10.1111/bjop.12439

Cited by 14 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…The current study is not the first to examine body adaptation in the context of gender. A recent study by Brooks et al (2019a) showed that aftereffects of perceived muscle and fat levels are larger in magnitude when the stimuli (adaptation and test) match the gender of the observer. 5 Although the current study focuses on inferences regarding the neural processing of body stimuli, it may also carry implications for real-world body image issues such as BSSM, especially when combined with the aforementioned results.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and the Body Size Aftereffect: Implications for Neural Processing

et al. 2019

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Prolonged exposure to wide (thin) bodies causes a perceptual aftereffect such that subsequently viewed bodies appear thinner (wider) than they actually are. This phenomenon is known as visual adaptation. We used the adaptation paradigm to examine the gender selectivity of the neural mechanisms encoding body size and shape. Observers adjusted female and male test bodies to appear normal-sized both before and after adaptation to bodies digitally altered to appear heavier or lighter. In Experiment 1, observers adapted simultaneously to bodies of each gender distorted in opposite directions, e.g., thin females and wide males. The direction of resultant aftereffects was contingent on the gender of the test stimulus, such that in this example female test bodies appeared wider while male test bodies appeared thinner. This indicates at least some separation of the neural mechanisms processing body size and shape for the two genders. In Experiment 2, adaptation involved either wide females, thin females, wide males or thin males. Aftereffects were present in all conditions, but were stronger when test and adaptation genders were congruent, suggesting some overlap in the tuning of gender-selective neural mechanisms. Given that visual adaptation has been implicated in real-world examples of body size and shape misperception (e.g., in anorexia nervosa or obesity), these results may have implications for the development of body image therapies based on the adaptation model.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and the Body Size Aftereffect: Implications for Neural Processing

et al. 2019

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“…The current study is not the first to examine body adaptation in the context of gender. A recent study by Brooks et al (2019) showed that aftereffects of perceived muscle and fat levels are larger in magnitude when the stimuli (adaptation and test) match the gender of the observer 4 . Although the current study focuses on inferences regarding the neural processing of body stimuli, it may also carry implications for real-world body image issues such as BSSM, especially when combined with the aforementioned results.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…In addition,Palumbo, Laeng & Tomassi (2013) demonstrated that exposure to typical male or female bodies could cause a shift in the perceived masculinity/femininity of otherwise androgynous-looking bodies. As inBrooks et al, (2019) effects were largest when adaptation stimuli matched the gender of the observer.…”

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confidence: 88%

Gender and the Body Size and Shape Aftereffect: Implications for neural processing

Kr¹,

Baldry²,

Mond³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Prolonged exposure to wide (thin) bodies causes a perceptual aftereffect such that subsequently-viewed bodies appear thinner (wider) than they actually are. This phenomenon is known as visual adaptation. We used the adaptation paradigm to examine the gender selectivity of the neural mechanisms encoding body size and shape. Observers adjusted female and male test bodies to appear normal-sized both before and after adaptation to bodies digitally altered to appear heavier or lighter. In Experiment 1, observers adapted simultaneously to bodies of each gender distorted in opposite directions, e.g. thin females and wide males. The direction of resultant aftereffects was contingent on the gender of the test stimulus, such that in this example female test bodies appeared wider while male test bodies appeared thinner. This indicates at least some separation of the neural mechanisms processing body size and shape for the two genders. In Experiment 2, adaptation involved either wide females, thin females, wide males or thin males. Aftereffects were present in all conditions, but were stronger when test and adaptation genders were congruent, suggesting some overlap in the tuning of gender-selective neural mechanisms. Given that visual adaptation has been implicated in real-world examples of body size and shape misperception (e.g. in anorexia nervosa or obesity), these results may have implications for the development of body image therapies based on the adaptation model.

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“…As we have shown here, estimation accuracies and errors interact with the type of stimuli presented in the experiment, thus illustrating that with increasing diversity in the stimuli, it might not be possible to show an “one-to-one mapping” using the above theories, as estimation decisions might be more complex than previously thought. While it is important to recognize that people have different body sizes, shapes, and other physical characteristics 19 , and that even BMI cut-off points may not capture variations in physiological measurements across cultures 45 , our current approach aims demonstrated that it is possible to capture and quantify some of the multi-dimensional visual characteristics, and it is critical that future work should also harness similar approaches.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Others have also attempted to illustrate the discrepancy of body weight across different ethnic groups 2 , 4 , 11 , 14 , 18 . Several vision scientists 19 – 25 have adopted a well-controlled visual psychophysics approach, using visual adaptation to investigate the impact of context and exposure on body size and shape misperception. Despite these investigations, more work is needed in order to quantify and delineate the contribution of gender, ethnicity, and identity in parallel.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Misalignment between perceptual boundaries and weight categories reflects a new normal for body size perception

Chan

Noles

Utkov

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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Combatting the current global epidemic of obesity requires that people have a realistic understanding of what a healthy body size looks like. This is a particular issue in different population sub-groups, where there may be increased susceptibility to obesity-related diseases. Prior research has been unable to systematically assess body size judgement due to a lack of attention to gender and race; our study aimed to identify the contribution of these factors. Using a data-driven multi-variate decision tree approach, we varied the gender and race of image stimuli used, and included the same diversity among participants. We adopted a condition-rich categorization visual task and presented participants with 120 unique body images. We show that gender and weight categories of the stimuli affect accuracy of body size perception. The decision pattern reveals biases for male bodies, in which participants showed an increasing number of errors from leaner to bigger bodies, particularly under-estimation errors. Participants consistently mis-categorized overweight male bodies as normal weight, while accurately categorizing normal weight. Overweight male bodies are now perceived as part of an expanded normal: the perceptual boundary of normal weight has become wider than the recognized BMI category. For female bodies, another intriguing pattern emerged, in which participants consistently mis-categorized underweight bodies as normal, whilst still accurately categorizing normal female bodies. Underweight female bodies are now in an expanded normal, in opposite direction to that of males. Furthermore, an impact of race type and gender of participants was also observed. Our results demonstrate that perceptual weight categorization is multi-dimensional, such that categorization decisions can be driven by ultiple factors.

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Muscle and fat aftereffects and the role of gender: Implications for body image disturbance

Cited by 14 publications

References 58 publications

Gender and the Body Size Aftereffect: Implications for Neural Processing

Gender and the Body Size Aftereffect: Implications for Neural Processing

Gender and the Body Size and Shape Aftereffect: Implications for neural processing

Misalignment between perceptual boundaries and weight categories reflects a new normal for body size perception

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