Bronze Is Beautiful Summary

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The problem. This study, entitled ‘Bronze is Beautiful…’ presented the problem of mortality and societal beauty standards that affect both self-esteem and the likelihood of participating in health-preventive measures. Essentially, the researchers asked the questions that if thoughts of personal mortality were induced among participants, would the outcome represent shifts toward self-esteem and reaching societal approval, rather toward health and safety? For instance, if the participant was presented with a survey about mortality, would their instances of tanning increase, if tanned skinned was primed to be considered beautiful, in society’s standards? These questions were prompted by the theory of terror management (TMT), which promotes the …show more content…

In order to prompt thoughts about death, a Fear of Death scale was given to participants, who used true or false answers about 15 items relating to death. If the participants were in the control group, a public speaking or fear of pain survey were used instead. After this mortality survey, a word search task and minor mood assessment were completed, to delay between thoughts of death and the dependent variables. Then, three different magazine articles were presented: one represented tan being attractive, pale being attractive, and the neutral article. The last survey measured tanning intentions, with a five-item assessment of sun tanning on a 9-point scale (ranging from ‘not at all’ to ‘totally’). In the second study, the measurement procedures were the same, however, the survey was completed in exchange for a scratch-off lottery ticket, and the articles were either pale or neutral (no tanned skin priming). The final survey in this study measured SPF preference and sun protection intentions, rather than tanning intentions. The study employed an experimental design of both 101, female college students, in the psychology department, with a mean age of 19.60, and 53 Caucasian females from a beach in Southern Florida, with a mean age of 22.98. The study used only women, because according to Pliner et al (1990), women are more likely than men to invest in self-appearance and more likely to tan regularly than men (Hillhouse et all, 1999). With these two groups, the researchers then used ANOVA (analysis of variance) on tanning and sun-protection intentions, and also conducted Chi-square analyses on the continuous variables of the study. The most important independent variables were

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