Building Resilience to Negative Effects of Thin-Ideal Media

No Thumbnail Available
Date
2016-04-01
Authors
Berch, Olivia
Major Professor
Advisor
Committee Member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Authors
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Organizational Unit
Psychology
The Department of Psychology may prepare students with a liberal study, or for work in academia or professional education for law or health-services. Graduates will be able to apply the scientific method to human behavior and mental processes, as well as have ample knowledge of psychological theory and method.
Journal Issue
Is Version Of
Versions
Series
Series
Honors Projects and Posters
University Honors Program

The Honors project is potentially the most valuable component of an Honors education. Typically Honors students choose to do their projects in their area of study, but some will pick a topic of interest unrelated to their major.

The Honors Program requires that the project be presented at a poster presentation event. Poster presentations are held each semester. Most students present during their senior year, but may do so earlier if their honors project has been completed.

This site presents project descriptions and selected posters for Honors projects completed since the Fall 2015 semester.

Department
Psychology
Abstract

Many of us, and by “us” I mean college-aged women who read fashion magazines, have looked at an advertisement and felt disgusted and guilty about our lack of exercise, obsession with junk food, or general feelings of being unsatisfactory. It seems hard to believe that just flipping through these ads could produce such strong feelings, but research indicates that they do. In the current study we investigate interventions to attenuate these negative effects; the two interventions include a media literacy TED talk (lead by Jean Kilbourne) and a self-compassion meditation (lead by Kristin Neff). 450 college women participated in this study. Two-thirds of them were exposed to an intervention; the rest were used as a control group. Half of each group was exposed to a set of advertisements considered to highlight a thin-ideal and the others were exposed to neutral advertisements. After advertisement exposure, participants were asked a variety of questions which included, but were not limited to, body satisfaction, self-esteem, and current self-compassion levels. Results of this study did not find clear support for either intervention. This may be due, however, to a fault in the thin-ideal media manipulation.

Comments
Description
Keywords
Citation
DOI
Source
Subject Categories
Copyright