The effects of weight and achievement messages on the self-esteem of women

We examined whether priming achievement causes lower self-esteem and more n egative mood in women who believe they are overweight and whether it does s o by increasing women's dissatisfaction with their bodies or with their per formance. Thirty-five self-perceived overweight women and 43 self-perceived normal weight women participated in the experiment. Half of the women read a message stressing the importance of achievement pursuits, and the other half read a message stressing the importance of nonachievement pursuits. Al l women then completed a measure of global self-esteem, red a message about the negative effects of being overweight, and completed several dependent measures. Controlling for initial self-esteem, overweight women who read th e achievement prime had tower mood and global self-esteem and lower perform ance self-esteem but not lower appearance self-esteem or greater body dissa tisfaction when compared to the overweight women who read the nonachievemen t prime and the normal weight women regardless of prime type.