The Affect of Attractiveness and Media on Self-Esteem

The experimenters want to look at the relationship between self-esteem and attractiveness; More importantly, how media's image of what is attractive affects a person's self-esteem and self worth. The experimenters want to conduct a Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE) as a pretest to all adult participants. Once the participants finish the pretest, they will be exposed to 50 images of very attractive people for about 20 to 30 seconds long. Once the participants go threw all the images, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE) will be given again to see if the scores have changed. The experimenters predict that the pretest and post test will have different scores to show that media's images of attractiveness can have a negative impact on someone's self-esteem and self worth. How quickly of an affect, even for a short amount of time for each picture, does it affect our self-esteem and moods of adults. The second group is a controlled group that will be given the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE) both pre-and post test. However, their pictures will be of average looking people with the same amount of time as group one of 50 pictures in 20 to 30 seconds.

The Affects of Attractiveness and Media on Self-Esteem

Being attractive has always played a huge role in mate selection in all animals, especially humans. When it comes to mate selection and attractiveness, power and dominance is a huge part of that selection. However, physical power and dominance is only a small part of a much larger mate selection of humans. Society might play the biggest role in attractiveness (Puts, 2010). In the Victorian era attractiveness was defined as someone who had very pale skin and who was overweight. The reasoning behind these physical traits were statu...

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The researcher hopes to find that both Group One and Group Two has about the same baseline measurement of their self-esteem. Once the experiment has finished, that Group One, the attractive pictures of men and women, will have a much lower self-esteem score on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE) than Group Two, the pictures of the average to below average men and women. This can show a relationship between self-esteem and self worth can be affected by media's images of what is considered attractive and what is not considered attractive. The researcher would also be interested in seeing if Group Two's self-esteem increases after being exposed to the less attractive pictures. This would give a better understand in the relationship between attractiveness and competitiveness. As well as the relationship between the affects of media and self-esteem and self worth.