Upward Body Comparisons, Body Appreciation, and Intentions to Use Body-Changing Behaviors

Abstract

The current standard of female beauty encompasses ideals of unattainable thinness that bombard women with ample opportunity to engage in upward body comparison. These comparisons have been shown to impede on women’s body satisfaction, but little is known about their behavioral consequences (Bould et al., 2016; Brown & Tiggemann, 2018; Fardouly et al., 2021). The current study aimed to investigate the impact of upward body comparisons (UBC) on college women’s body appreciation and intentions to use both healthy and unhealthy body change behaviors. In an experiment, women were randomly assigned to an experimental condition, where they were asked to compare their bodies to ten images of ‘ideal’ female bodies or a control condition, where they were asked to compare their home to ten images of landscapes. All participants completed a pre-comparison measure of state body appreciation as well as some additional measures investigating other body-related behaviors and perceptions. Following exposure to the images, participants completed a post-comparison measure of state body appreciation as well as measures assessing their intentions to use body-change behaviors in the future. We hypothesized that women who were exposed to the bodies would show a decrease in state body appreciation after image exposure and a report greater intention to engage in body-change behaviors, relative to the control group. However, we found that in the UBC group, state body appreciation increased relative to the control group and there were no differences in behavioral intentions between conditions. Additionally, strong associations were found between individual factors (i.e., eating disorder risk, upward comparison tendency, appearance investment, health orientation) and the primary outcome variables of body appreciation and body-change intentions. These findings suggest a more complex relationship between upward body comparisons and their body-related consequences. Continued research should examine the influence of comparison context and motivation on psychological outcomes as well as the interplay of individual differences as risk or protective factors in the relationship between upward body comparisons and body appreciation.