Identifying Body Appreciation by Visualising Actual/Ideal Self-Discrepancy: An Avatar Creation Task

Abstract

Negative body perception can negatively affect one’s health, as it can lead to depression and eating disorders. Body appreciation on the other hand, is about accepting, respecting, loving, and appreciating the body, and has been associated with self-esteem, optimism, life satisfaction, and other factors related to the well-being. The aim of this research project is to investigate whether lower body appreciation can be identified by visualising the discrepancy between someone’s actual self and their ideal self (i.e., the distance between these two domains of the self). This discrepancy is visualised through an avatar creation task using The Sims 4 in which participants have to create an avatar of (1) the way they actually look, and (2) their ideal image. Participants’ body appreciation was measured using the BAS-2 body appreciation scale, which contains ten statements about one’s feelings towards their body. Actual/ideal self-discrepancy was calculated by measuring the number of changes that were made in order to get from the actual body to the ideal body. Analysis of the results reveals that (a) adjustments to certain avatar traits significantly correlate with body appreciation scores, and (b) some gender differences are notably predictive, e.g., with respect to “muscle”, “middle body”, and ”weight” changes. As such, we may conclude that the developed avatar creation task which measures the discrepancy between the actual and ideal self, can indeed be used as a tool to identify (lower) body appreciation.