Third-person effects of idealized body image in magazine advertisements

Abstract

There have been contradictory findings concerning the direct effects of ideal body image advertising on women's body concerns. Despite numerous studies, the mechanism of how women are affected negatively by such imagery is still unclear. The current study explored why women are influenced negatively by ideal body image in the third-person effect framework. In particular, the authors proposed gendered "others" and hypothesized that when those others were men, exposure to the ideal body would create larger third-person perceptions: there would be a negative relationship between third-person gaps and body area satisfaction. Findings confirmed the importance of gendered others, such that women estimated close male friends would be more affected by ideal body image than close female friends.