Health Psychology

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Health Psychology

• Lecture 10
• Physical Attractiveness and Body Image

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Lecture 8 - Outline

• Part 1
• Importance of Physical Beauty
• Defining Beauty
• Biological Basis of Beauty
• Part 2
• Body Image (definition, measurement epidemiology)
• Health implications (psychopathology,
  sub-clinical)
• Part 3
• Mens body image (steroid abuse)

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Schwartz (1992)
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(No Transcript)
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Question

• Is physical beauty important?
• Answer Not really
• Answer (academia) NO!!
• Many intellectuals would have us believe that
  beauty is inconsequential Since it explains
  nothing, solves nothing, and teaches us nothing,
  it should not have a place in intellectual
  discourse
• (Etcoff, 1999)

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Preferential Treatment

• My fourth Cosmetic Discovery occurred at 18 I
  awoke to a realization that would take a long
  time to play out, but in essence Cosmetic
  Discovery 4 was this if youre a young,
  blue-ribbon egg-bearer, theres nothing you cant
  get away with. Nobody who hasnt been there has
  any idea, and even those who have wont really
  understand until after the stampede of
  sperm-bearers has passed because theres so much
  dust in the air
• (supermodel Lauren Hutton, 1995)

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Behavioral Evidence

• What is beautiful is good
• Advantages afforded to the physically attractive
• Physical attractiveness stereotype
• Preferential treatment

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Biological Basis of Beauty

• beauty is in the eye of the beholder?
• Evolutionary psychology
• Humans are driven to select mates who will give
  them the greatest likelihood of healthy, abundant
  offspring (Buss, 1989)
• Healthy mates produce healthy offspring
• Physical beauty is a health certification

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Pathogen-Resistance Theory

• beauty is a physiologic burden that only a strong
  body can support

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An example (secondary sex characteristics)

• Facial attractiveness
• Women - smallness in lower face is attractive
• Men - largeness in lower face is attractive
• Hormones
• Women - estrogen caps growth of lower face during
  puberty
• Men - testosterone ? growth of lower face during
  puberty
• Sex hormones are immunosupressors
• only immunocompetent individuals can afford the
  expression of secondary sex characteristics

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David Buss (1989)

• Mate selection
• Cross-cultural research (33 countries)
• Consistently across samples
• Men preferred younger mates
• Strong women preferred older mates
• Men placed stronger value of physical
  attractiveness than women
• Women placed stronger value on good financial
  prospect than men
• Importance of attractiveness correlated
  positively with the prevalence of parasitic
  disease across societies.

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Body Image

• the psychological experience of ones own body
• Body image is multifaceted
• Perceptual
• Cognitive
• Affective
• Behavioral

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Body Image Measurement

• the psychological experience of ones own body
• Body image measurement is multifaceted
• Perceptual (body size estimation)
• Cognitive (attainability, perceived control)
• Affective (body dissatisfaction)
• Behavioral (grooming, checking, etc)

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Figure Rating Scales

• Body dissatisfaction discrepancy between actual
  and ideal.

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Body-Self Relations Questionnaire

• Lower scores higher body dissatisfaction
• My body is sexually appealing
• I like my looks just the way they are
• Most people would consider me good looking
• I like the way I look without my clothes
• I dislike my physique
• Im physically unattractive
• (reverse code)

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Physical Appearance Trait Anxiety Scale

• Higher scores higher body dissatisfaction
• In general, I feel anxious, nervous or tense
  about
• The extent to which I look overweight My ears
• My thighs My lips
• My buttocks My wrists
• My hips My hands
• My stomach My forehead
• My legs My neck
• My waist My chin
• My muscle tone My feet
• (1 never, 2 seldom, 3 sometimes, 4 often,
  5 always)

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Epidemiology

• How prevalent is a negative body image?
• Overall Appearance Dissatisfaction
• 1972 1985 1996
• Women 23 38 56
• Men 15 34 43

Garner (1997)
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Epidemiology

• How prevalent is a negative body image?
• Mid-Torso Dissatisfaction
• 1972 1985 1996
• Women 50 57 71
• Men 36 50 63

Garner (1997)
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Epidemiology

• How prevalent is a negative body image?
• Lower-Torso Dissatisfaction
• 1972 1985 1996
• Women 49 50 61
• Men 12 21 29

Garner (1997)
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Epidemiology

• How prevalent is a negative body image?
• Upper-Torso Dissatisfaction
• 1972 1985 1996
• Women 27 32 34
• Men 18 28 38

Garner (1997)
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Consequences?

• Psychopathology
• Body Dysmorphic Disorder
• Preoccupation with an imagined defect in
  appearance causes distress/impaired functioning
• Eating Disorders
• Anorexia Nervosa
• Bulimia Nervosa
• Binge-Eating Disorder

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Consequences?

• Sub-Clinical
• Social relations
• Sexual functioning
• Starting Smoking
• Low self-esteem, depressive symptoms
• Eating behaviors (dieting, binging, purging)
• Avoidance of exercise
• Learning and cognition
• Cosmetic surgery

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Risk Factors - Body Dissatisfaction

• Biological
• BMI
• Physical Attractiveness
• Psychological
• Appearance investment (importance)
• Internalization of societal ideals
• Social
• Demographics (gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality)
• Sociocultural influences (family, peers, mass
  media)
• Cultural Ideals of Attractiveness (e.g., Tonga)

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Media and girls body image

• Evidence from 5 sources
• Content Analyses of Media Ideals
• thin-ideal is getting thinner
• Self-report
• Correlational Studies (no longitudinal yet)
• television exposure
• emulate media personalities / internalization
• Cross-Cultural Studies
• Experimental Studies
• Meta-Analysis of 25 studies (Groez et al., 2002)
• small but consistent negative effect
• certain individuals particularly vulnerable

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Media and boys body image

• Content Analyses (last 20 years)
• men more often topless in magazines (Pope et al.,
  2001)
• Playgirls centrefolds increasingly muscular
• action toys increasingly muscular (Pope et al.,
  1999)
• But, Nivea for MenDare to Care
• Correlational Studies
• exposure to entertainment TV (Anderson et al.,
  2001)
• emulate media personalities (Field et al., 2001)
• internalization of muscular ideal (Smolak et al.,
  2001)
• Experimental Studies
• ...

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Mens Body Image

• Unlike women, men labor under a social taboo
  against expressing such feelings. Real men
  arent supposed to whine about their looks their
  not even supposed to worry about such things.
• (Pope et al., 2000)

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Male Body Image

• Sources of dissatisfaction
• Muscle
• Receding hair
• Fat (pot belly, love handles)
• Small penis
• Or some other perceived deficiency

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Male Body Image

• Muscle Dysmorphia (BDD)
• Sometimes called reverse anorexia
• People with muscle dysmorphia are ashamed of
  looking too small when theyre actually big
• Need to exercise every day, feelings of being too
  fat, dislike of their bodies, persist in
  exercising despite pain and injury

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Male Body Image

• Body dissatisfaction is increasingly common in
  men
• Two recent societal changes
• Threatened masculinity
• Images of the roided body have infiltrated
  media images and societal ideals
• (Pope et al., 2000)

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Anabolic Steroids

• Family of drugs that contain the male hormone
  testosterone
• Illegal unless prescribed, but widely available
  on black market
• Taken orally or by injection
• Allow user to gain muscle mass, far beyond that
  attainable without

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Anabolic Steroids

• Medical hazards - increased risk of
• Heart disease
• Stroke
• Prostate cancer
• Leads to use of other drugs (become steroid
  dependant)
• pain killers to deal with aches and pains of
  lifting
• morphine and heroin.

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Anabolic Steroids

• Psychological effects
• Mood swings
• Irritability
• Short tempered, over react to situations, sudden
  bursts of aggression (roid rage)
• Psychotic delusions (plotting to harm)
• Personality changes (cockiness)
• Excess confidence, grandiose beliefs

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Anabolic Steroids

• What can be done?
• Education
• Interdiction (law enforcement)
• Psychiatric treatment for users
• Remove secrecy (steroid users are cheats)

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Body Image - Treatment and Prevention

• What can be done?
• Change the body
• Weight loss
• Physical exercise
• Cosmetic surgery
• Change the body image
• CBT
• Psychopharmacology
• Psychoeducation

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Treatment and Prevention

• What can be done?
• Prevention - ecological and activism approaches