Abstract
Implicit and explicit attitudes influence our behavior. Accordingly, it was the main goal of the paper to investigate if those attitudes are related to body image satisfaction. 134 young women between 18 and 34 years completed an explicit affective rating and an implicit affective priming task with pictures of women with different BMIs. Because it is well known that mindfulness, self-compassion and social media activity influence body image satisfaction, these variables were registered as well. The results confirmed an explicit positive affective bias toward pictures of slim women and a negative bias toward emaciated and obese body pictures. It adds to the literature that the explicit positive bias does not hold true for the strongest form of underweight, suggesting that instead of dividing different body shapes into two groups, different gradings of under- and overweight should be considered. Concerning the affective priming task, no significant differences between the different pictures could be carved out. Implicit and explicit affective attitudes were not related to the body satisfaction of the participating women. In line with former studies, body satisfaction was predicted by the actual-ideal weight discrepancy, the BMI, aspects of mindfulness and self-compassion. This study indicates that implicit and explicit affective attitudes toward underweight and overweight women are unrelated to the participants’ body satisfaction.
Highlights
Body image describes “a person’s perceptions, thoughts and feelings about his or her body” (Grogan, 2008)
The implicit and explicit affective attitudes toward underand overweight and the components of mindfulness, selfcompassion and the social media use will be investigated in detail
With a medium effect size f = 0.15, an alpha-level of p = 0.05, a power of 1 − β = 0.80 and 18 predictors (positive and negative scale of self-compassion, 5 different explicit and implicit attitudes toward the emaciated, underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese pictures, the use of social media, own BMI, actual-ideal weight discrepancy, and the three mindfulness aspects of acting with awareness, accepting without judgment and describing), a power analysis for the linear regression resulted in a sample size of N = 150 women
Summary
Body image describes “a person’s perceptions, thoughts and feelings about his or her body” (Grogan, 2008). According to Heider et al (2018), body image dissatisfaction results from a discrepancy between the perceived actual body image and the ideal body image, which can be described as internalized ideals about the own physical appearance. Women suffer from body dissatisfaction, e.g., it had a significantly higher impact on their self-esteem compared to men in a study with 235 participants (Furnham et al, 2002; Karazsia et al, 2017). Regarding the positive connection between body satisfaction and quality of life, it is important to investigate factors which are related to body satisfaction. The implicit and explicit affective attitudes toward underand overweight and the components of mindfulness, selfcompassion and the social media use will be investigated in detail
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