‘Large Is Beautiful!’ Associative Retraining Changes Implicit Beliefs About Thinness and Beauty and Decreases Women’s Appearance Anxiety

International Review of Social Psychology

Julie Collange¹  Yvana Bocage-Barthélémy²  Leila Selimbegovic²  Armand Chatard² 

[1] Université de Paris, Laboratoire de Psychologie et Ergonomie Appliquées – LaPEA;Université de Poitiers, Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l’Apprentissage (UMR CNRS 7295);

关键词: thin ideal;    implicit beliefs;    appearance anxiety;    retraining;    semantic associations;   

DOI  :  10.5334/irsp.442

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The present research aimed to investigate whether retraining thin-beautiful associations could modify implicit beliefs relating thinness to beauty, increase me-beauty associations, and decrease explicit body anxiety in young women. In Experiment 1 (N = 180 women), participants were repeatedly exposed to beauty-related words paired with thin-related or large-related words on 50% (control) versus 75% (retraining) of trials. Implicit belief was assessed with a Relational Responding Task. In Experiment 2 (N = 195 women), me-beauty associations were assessed with a single-category Implicit Association Task, and body anxiety with a self-report measure. The implicit association measure remained unaffected by the retraining task. However, after retraining, women displayed weaker thin-is-beautiful implicit belief, Cohen’s 'd' = 0.44, 'CI95'[0.14, 0.74], and less body anxiety, Cohen’s 'd' = 0.34, 'CI95'[0.06, 0.63] than in the control condition. These results suggest that retraining thin-beautiful associations could reduce thin-is-beautiful implicit beliefs and decrease explicit body anxiety among women.

【 授权许可】

Unknown