Abstract
Several studies suggest that sociocultural models conveying extreme thinness as the widespread ideal of beauty exert an important influence on the perceptual and emotional representation of body image. The psychological mechanisms underlying such environmental influences, however, are unclear. Here, we utilized a perceptual adaptation paradigm to investigate how perceptual experience modulates body esthetic appreciation. We found that the liking judgments of round bodies increased or decreased after brief exposure to round or thin bodies, respectively. No change occurred in the liking judgments of thin bodies. The results suggest that perceptual experience may shape our esthetic appreciation to favor more familiar round body figures. Importantly, individuals with more deficits in interoceptive awareness were less prone to increase their liking ratings of round bodies after exposure, suggesting a specific risk factor for the susceptibility to the influence of the extreme thin vs. round body ideals of beauty portrayed by the media.
Highlights
Body esthetics is a fundamental dimension of self-image that strongly impacts well-being and mental health
To estimate the esthetic judgment change (EJC) after exposure, we calculated the ratio between the post- and pre-exposure Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) values for each participant and exposure condition, allowing an estimate of the judgment change independently from the absolute scale used by the participants in rating the stimuli
No changes were observed after the control exposure for either round or thin models, and no differences were obtained between the baseline values for the three exposure conditions
Summary
Body esthetics is a fundamental dimension of self-image that strongly impacts well-being and mental health. The effects of exposure to round bodies were less pronounced in individuals with higher body dissatisfaction and stronger internalization of Western ideals, supporting the connection between the effects of perceptual adaptation and the development of body image disturbances In these previous studies [28,29,30] the same stimulus used during the exposure phase was presented for 6 s before each test image in the post-exposure evaluation phase. In the present study we investigated how the aesthetic judgment of the beauty of the body changes after exposure to different body weights and, in particular, whether such experience-dependent effects follow the prediction of the perceptual aftereffects or the norm-based accounts. We expect that exposure effects should be related to body dissatisfaction and to other psychological dimensions that characterize the clinical profile of ED patients and may mediate the particular susceptibility of these individuals to the effects of socio-cultural influence on body representation
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