The current study was an investigation of the self-schema and social comparison theories of body dissatisfaction. The social comparison manipulation consisted of exposure to one of three levels of comparison figure: upward, downward, or no comparison. Two different imagery exercises served to prime either a participants’ appearance self-schema, or a non-appearance schema. Participants completed state measures of body image and mood at pre- and posttest. Results indicated no significant interaction between priming and social comparison and no significant main effect for priming. However, there was a significant effect of social comparison, such that those in the downward comparison condition showed an increase in body satisfaction and positive mood. Results are discussed in the context of self-schema theory and social comparison, and suggestions are given for future research that might further shed light on these theoretical approaches for understanding body dissatisfaction.
Two prominent cognitive models that have been applied to the study of body image and disordered eating behaviors are self-schema theory and appearance social comparison (Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1999). Self-schemas are “cognitive generalizations about the self, derived from past experience that organize and guide the processing of self-related information” (Markus, 1977, p. 64). Individuals for whom appearance is very important are purported to develop more complex, interconnected networks of knowledge and affect regarding appearance, and to demonstrate a variety of information-processing biases related to their self-schema (Markus, Hamill, & Sentis, 1987). Researchers have in fact demonstrated biases in attention, memory, and judgment or selective interpretation related to appearance and body image, which has been taken as evidence for the existence of appearance schemas (Williamson, 1996; Williamson, Muller, Reas, & Thaw, 1999). Because the elaborateness of a schema, or schematicity, cannot be manipulated as an independent variable, researchers investigating self-schemas have borrowed a priming paradigm from cognitive psychology in which a presumed pre-existing self-schema is primed or activated by the presentation of schema-relevant stimuli (Altabe & Thompson, 1996). Stimuli or procedures that have been used in prior studies include word stem completion tasks (Altabe & Thompson, 1996), pictures of specific body parts (Altabe & Thompson, 1996), answering questions regarding appearance and being weighed by a researcher (Labarge, Cash, & Brown, 1998), watching television commercials with depictions of women with ideal appearances (Hargreaves and Tiggemann, 2002 and Hargreaves and Tiggemann, 2003), and viewing advertisements for beauty products (Birkeland et al., 2005). The results of these studies have been mixed. Some researchers have found significant effects on body satisfaction, appearance satisfaction, depression, anger, self-confidence, and interference on a modified Stroop task (Altabe & Thompson, 1996, Study 2; Labarge et al., 1998; Hargreaves and Tiggemann, 2002 and Hargreaves and Tiggemann, 2003), while others reported no effect of the priming (Altabe & Thompson, 1996, Study 1; Birkeland et al., 2005).
