برچسب سلب مسئولیت روی تبلیغات مجله مد: اثرات بر مقایسه اجتماعی و نارضایتی از بدن

Recent proposals across a number of Western countries have suggested that idealised media images should carry some sort of disclaimer informing readers when these images have been digitally enhanced. The present studies aimed to experimentally investigate the impact on women's body dissatisfaction of the addition of such warning labels to fashion magazine advertisements. Participants were 120 and 114 female undergraduate students in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 respectively. In both experiments, participants viewed fashion magazine advertisements with either no warning label, a generic warning label, or a specific more detailed warning label. In neither experiment was there a significant effect of type of label. However, state appearance comparison was found to predict change in body dissatisfaction irrespective of condition. Unexpectedly, trait appearance comparison moderated the effect of label on body dissatisfaction, such that for women high on trait appearance comparison, exposure to specific warning labels actually resulted in increased body dissatisfaction. In sum, the present results showed no benefit of warning labels in ameliorating the known negative effect of viewing thin-ideal media images, and even suggested that one form of warning (specific) might be harmful for some individuals. Accordingly, it was concluded that more extensive research is required to guide the most effective use of disclaimer labels.

Widespread body dissatisfaction among women, particularly with body shape and weight, has now been documented in an extensive research literature, adding cumulative support to Rodin, Silberstein, and Striegel-Moore's (1985) earlier conceptualization of weight as a “normative discontent” for women. Such high levels of body dissatisfaction and accompanying disordered eating are generally attributed to sociocultural factors (e.g., Thompson et al., 1999 and Tiggemann, 2011). It is certainly clear that current societal standards for female beauty inordinately emphasize the desirability of thinness, and thinness at such a level as to be increasingly impossible for most women to achieve (Spitzer, Henderson, & Zivian, 1999). While such beauty ideals can be transmitted in many ways, e.g., by parents and peers, the mass media represent by far the most powerful and persuasive sociocultural transmitter (Groesz, Levine, & Murnen, 2002) and are argued to play an important causal role in body dissatisfaction and disordered eating (e.g., Nemeroff et al., 1994 and Tiggemann, 2002).