Body image, mood, and televised images of attractiveness: The role of social comparison

Heinberg and Thompson (1995) demonstrated that females exposed to a compila tion of media images (commercials) reflecting the current societally sancti oned standards of thinness and attractiveness experienced greater mood and body image disturbance than females who viewed a neutral, nonappearance-rel ated control video. Social comparison has been offered as one mechanism for the negative outcomes of such media-based exposures. In the current study, social comparison was manipulated by creating three instructional conditio ns: comparison, distraction, and neutral. Instructional set did not differe ntially affect recall of appearance or nonappearance aspects of either an a ppearance-related collection of commercials or a nonappearance video (e.g., Heinberg & Thompson, 1995). However, participants in the comparison condit ion self-reported a greater degree of self-to-model comparison than partici pants in the distraction or neutral conditions. A marginally significant th ree-way interaction between condition, tape, and time emerged for a measure of appearance dissatisfaction, suggesting that comparison participants' bo dy images were more negatively affected than the other groups. Tape by Time interactions also emerged for measures of anger, anxiety, and depression, revealing that greater distress was associated with the viewing of media im ages reflecting the current societal bias towards thinness and attractivene ss. Dispositional level of internalization of societal values regarding att ractiveness moderated women's reactions to the two video presentations. The findings are discussed with regard to sociocultural models of body image a nd possible implications for interventions for appearance-related distress.