Abstract
Promoting health-related behaviors such as healthy eating or doing sports are important to counteract the problem of obesity, which is on the rise. In this regard, initial studies suggest that appearance compared to health framing can lead to negative body-related outcomes in young women. This study aimed to extend these findings by investigating the role of the context. Furthermore, as previous studies focused on young women only, we considered a more diverse sample. This seems especially important as health campaigns focusing on healthy eating and sports should appeal to a more diverse population. This experimental study (N = 286) follows a 2 (appearance frame vs. health frame) × 2 (social media vs. magazine website) between-subjects design. Results revealed that exposure to appearance-focused framing led to a lower positive mood compared with exposure to health-focused framing. These effects were most prevalent in overweight and obese participants. Moreover, participants in the social media condition showed lower body satisfaction and lower positive mood compared with participants in the magazine website condition independent of the frame. No other interaction effects occured. Overall, health promoters should focus their campaigns on the health aspects of health-related behaviors and should consider promotion on social media platforms. Also, they should keep in mind that not only the framing, but also the context, might have effects on body-related outcomes.
Highlights
The media has the ability to shape the awareness of people on what behaviors are important in order to reach a specific goal
Based on the social comparison theory [30], individuals are more likely to engage in comparison processes with other individuals that seem similar to themselves. Based on this empirical support [12] and on the theoretical assumptions of the social comparison theory [30], we argue that social media posts might have a greater influence on the body-related concerns of the participants compared to magazine content [10]
According to chi-square tests, 83.9% participants in the magazine website condition stated correctly that they saw a website of a magazine whereas 94.2% of participants in the social media condition stated correctly that they saw social media posts (p < 0.001)
Summary
The media has the ability to shape the awareness of people on what behaviors are important in order to reach a specific goal In this regard, health messages promoting healthy eating or doing sports might act as crucial channels in combating the public health threats on rise worldwide, such as overweight and obesity [1]. Current research revealed that, in different contexts (i.e., magazines, social media), such health behaviors (i.e., engaging in physical activity, maintaining a healthy diet) are often portrayed in connection to the goal of improving the appearance of an individual, whereas health benefits are not emphasized [3,4,5,6]. This seems problematic because the reasoning for engaging in health-related behaviors has been shown to be decisive [7].
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