The Processing of Thin Ideals in Fashion Magazines: A Source of Social Comparison or Fantasy?

The effect of digital alteration disclaimer labels on social comparison and body image: Instructions and individual differences

“…Thus, focussing on non-appearance qualities of the advertisements seemed to block the normal level of appearance comparison generated in response to thin ideal exposure. These findings for instructional condition are consistent with suggestions by Tiggemann et al (2009) andWant (2009) that experimental instructions can influence how participants process thin ideal imagery. One practical implication of this finding is that body dissatisfaction would be reduced if women could be educated to process media images in a less self-relevant way.…”

“…The main effects observed for instructional condition showed that instructions were not irrelevant, as being asked to rate the advertisements in different ways influenced how participants processed the thin ideal images, supporting previous research in this area (Cattarin et al, 2000;Tiggemann & McGill, 2004;Tiggemann & Polivy, 2010;Tiggemann et al, 2009). The three comparison items embedded within general items were sufficiently powerful to lead to increased levels of both social appearance comparison and body dissatisfaction.…”

“…In particular, it has been shown that social comparison instructions lead to increased appearance comparison processing and body dissatisfaction for women exposed to thin ideal advertisements (Cattarin, Thompson, Thomas, & Williams, 2000;Tiggemann & McGill, 2004;Tiggemann & Polivy, 2010;Tiggemann, Polivy, & Hargreaves, 2009). Accordingly, it is likely that experimental instructions might also affect how women process the information contained in digital alteration disclaimer labels, and consequently affect body image.…”

Does Media Literacy Mitigate Risk for Reduced Body Satisfaction Following Exposure to Thin-Ideal Media?

“…Findings from one (Tiggemann et al 2009), but not other studies (Tiggemann and McGill 2004;Tiggemann and Polivy 2010), demonstrated that, in an appearance comparison processing condition relative to a control condition, greater body dissatisfaction was reported following thin-ideal media viewing. Although the outcomes for experimental conditions were not consistent in these studies, levels of reported appearance comparison processing have been shown to impact body dissatisfaction outcomes.…”

“…Specifically, post-viewing body dissatisfaction was related to greater appearance comparison during the viewing of thin-ideal images for college-age women (Tiggemann and McGill 2004;Tiggemann and Polivy 2010) and muscular-ideal images for college-age men (Galioto and Crowther 2013;Hargreaves and Tiggemann 2009), further strengthening evidence for the role of appearance comparison processing in body image outcomes during media viewing.…”