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Thinking Thin: How Body Image Issues Affect Information Processing

Brady, Christine Elizabeth
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1306350535

Abstract Details

2011, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Communication.
This research studies how chronic stress-induced by body image concerns affect how collegiate women process advertisements utilizing thinness depicting images. The first research question gauges chronic body-image stress by using several stress, body image and anxiety scales to determine which scale is the best measure of the independent variable. The project finds theoretical grounding in the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacciopo, 1981), the Extended ELM (Slater, 1997) and the Unimodel (Kruglanski et al, 1999). It was hypothesized that high chronic body-image stress would lead to a greater number of thoughts about the model and lower recall of thinness-depicting brands. Results indicated that those participants who demonstrated high chronic body-image stress, indicated by their scores on the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale (Hart et al, 2008, 1996), had more thoughts about the model and recalled less brand features of the advertisements with thinness-depicting images. The findings imply that current advertising practices that utilize thin models to sell products may not be the most effective way to target the young adult market because those with high chronic body-image stress process less of the brand features when presented with a thinness-depicting advertisement.
Stacie Powers, Dr. (Advisor)
David Ewoldsen, Dr. (Committee Member)
Communication
body image; body dysmorphia; stress; information processing; unimodel

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Brady, C. E. (2011). Thinking Thin: How Body Image Issues Affect Information Processing [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1306350535

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Brady, Christine. Thinking Thin: How Body Image Issues Affect Information Processing. 2011. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1306350535.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Brady, Christine. "Thinking Thin: How Body Image Issues Affect Information Processing." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1306350535

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1306350535
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© 2011, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.