This study was conducted to analyze the effects of thinness promoting advertising message on young female’s mood and body dissatisfaction and investigate how female’s processing of Thinness Promoting Messages (TPM) are related to their mood and bo...
This study was conducted to analyze the effects of thinness promoting advertising message on young female’s mood and body dissatisfaction and investigate how female’s processing of Thinness Promoting Messages (TPM) are related to their mood and body dissatisfaction. This study hypothesized that the effects of direct exposure to TPM would be found on mood and body dissatisfaction. Also the three processing variables proposed by this study, upward comparison, thinness as a social norm and appearance orientation as a personal character, would influence mood and body dissatisfaction as well.
A survey was carried out on a convenience sample of 224 female in their twenties. 111 female were exposed to TPM related advertising, 113 female were exposed to non-TPM related advertising. Respondents filled out the questionnaire that dealt with processing after seeing TPM and non-TPM and their mood and body dissatisfaction.
The results showed that exposure to TPM ads led to increased negative mood and body dissatisfaction compared to non-TPM ads. Also, those exposed to TPM were more likely to make upward comparison and accept thinness as a social norm compared to those exposed to non-TPM. Two processing variables, upward comparison and thinness as a social norm, were negatively related to the mood and the body satisfaction. The more respondents made upward comparison with thin models in ads, the more they accepted them as a social norm with thin ideal. Also, they experienced more negative mood and were not satisfied with their body images. The level of appearance orientation were related to upward comparison and thinness as a social norm, as it were, those who have higher level of appearance orientation tended to make upward comparison and accept thinness as a social norm.
The multiple regression analyses showed that exposure to TPM and upward comparison served as significant predictive variables for mood and only upward comparison did for body dissatisfaction.
Future study should be directed on developing and refining measures on TPM processing variables and more rigorous methods should be employed in dealing with the exposure of effects.