The Effect Of Appearance Comparison And Internalization Of Thin-ideal On Body Satisfaction Of The Young Female

With the widespread of the social culture of "thin is beauty" in modern society, the femalepursue body shaping blindly as more of them may even suffer from mental disorders such asbulimia, depression and so on. Based on relevant researches, the female have lower bodysatisfaction and have to endure more social pressure which are associated with body shaping andappearance when compare to that of men. Thompson’s group set up the Tripartite Influence Modelof body dissatisfaction which have confirmed appearance comparison and internalization of thin-ideal is the two key variables for effecting the body satisfaction of the young females. However,the previous researches haven’t focused on the specific effect mechanism. This study fullyexplored the specific effect mechanism of appearance comparison and internalization of thin-idealin the body satisfaction of female with both measuring and experimental study.Study1adopts questionnaires to investigate the effect of family, peer and media on the bodysatisfaction of females and the mediation effect of appearance comparison and internalization ofthin-ideal to test the Tripartite Influence Model of body dissatisfaction. Study2aims to analyze theeffect of appearance comparison to the body satisfaction of females with laboratory study which iscomposed of two experiments. The first experiment reveals the influence of the activation ofappearance comparison to the body satisfaction of females. The second experiment discusseswhether automatic processing mechanism exists in appearance comparison by the task ofsubliminal priming. Study3analyzes the effect of activated internalization of thin-ideal on bodysatisfaction of females.The results are as follows:①Appearance comparison completely mediates the relationshipamong family, peer and media with body satisfaction of female. What’s more, internalization ofthin-ideal completely mediates the relationship between media and body satisfaction of female, buthas partial mediation effect between peer and body satisfaction;②The scores of body satisfactionand body self-esteem in activated appearance comparison group were significant lower than theones without activating appearance comparison. In subliminal priming task, the response time tobody, positive and negative words of experimental group was significant shorter than that ofcontrol group. Females in appearance comparison activating under threshold had cognitive biaseson body words which proved that automatic processing mechanism does exist in appearancecomparison;③Furthermore, according to the scores of body satisfaction and body self-esteem in activated internalization of thin-ideal group, there was significant difference between the twogroups. The group with no activating internalization of thin-ideal had much higher scores. Theresponse time to body and negative words in experimental group was significant shorter than thecontrol group which could indicate that females in activated internalization of thin-ideal had morecognitive biases on both of these two kinds of words.