Body Image Psychology

Mass media has evolved over the years and is heard to have many effects on body image. Does mass media have an effect on body image? To answer this question, I have explored academic articles for different social science disciplines. This particular discipline is Psychology. The discipline of psychology will show how body images affect people and what causes them to be affected. The articles being reviewed are Barlett, Christopher P., Christopher L. Vowels and Donald A. Saucier. “Meta-Analyses of the Effects of Media Images on Men’s Body Image Concerns.” Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology. 27.3 (2008) : 279-310., Hayes, Sharon and Stacey Tantleff-Dunn. “Am I too fat to be a princess? Examining the effects of popular children’s media on

Vowels and Donald A. Saucier explores how men may also be affected by mass media and body image. 2 studies were done to explore this research. The first study explored different literature about mass media and body image effects and whether they correlate. The study explored different articles from 1806-2005 by searching how the media affects men’s self esteem towards their body. There were 4,324 participants in these articles. The results of this study showed that mass media did have an effect on men’s body image and they did have a correlation. Study 2 explored literatures with experiments on how men’s body image was affected by mass media. The results showed the when men see photos of other men with big muscles they have a negative body satisfaction. This shows that many muscular images do have an affect on men and lowers their self-esteem. This article is relevant for my research because it shows how women are not the only ones whose self-esteem towards their body is affected by the media. Men are also affected. If I would change something about this article it would be to make their own experiment and not explore other

To answer their research question, they used four experiments. Their sample was 127 girls between the ages of 10-13 who attended school in England. The video used for the intervention was a girl in a Dove commercial. The commercial shows how much is edited before publishing the image in a magazine or a billboard. They explored body dissatisfaction, body image, body satisfaction and body esteem. Some of the girls watched the video and some of them did not. This was to see the difference in reactions. There was a significant difference in people who watched the video versus the girls who did not. For the girls who did not watch the video, after they were exposed to thin models, their body satisfaction lowered. For the girls who did watch the video, their body satisfaction did not change. The same results were found for body esteem. The authors concluded with the results that the girls who did not watch the video of how the media edits and alters models bodies had a lower body esteem and dissatisfaction after looking at skinny models. This article is a great help for my research because it shows the results when people see skinny models without knowing the editing that goes