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Nutritional status and the influence of TV consumption on female body size ideals in populations recently exposed to the media

Jucker, J.L.; Thornborrow, T.; Beierholm, U.; Burt, D.M.; Barton, R.A.; Evans, E.H.; Jamieson, M.; Boothroyd, L.G.

Nutritional status and the influence of TV consumption on female body size ideals in populations recently exposed to the media Thumbnail


Authors

J.L. Jucker

T. Thornborrow

M. Jamieson



Abstract

Television consumption influences perceptions of attractive female body size. However, cross-cultural research examining media influence on body ideals is typically confounded by differences in the availability of reliable and diverse foodstuffs. 112 participants were recruited from 3 Nicaraguan villages that differed in television consumption and nutritional status, such that the contribution of both factors could be revealed. Participants completed a female figure preference task, reported their television consumption, and responded to several measures assessing nutritional status. Communities with higher television consumption and/or higher nutritional status preferred thinner female bodies than communities with lower television consumption and/or lower nutritional status. Bayesian mixed models estimated the plausible range of effects for television consumption, nutritional status, and other relevant variables on individual preferences. The model explained all meaningful differences between our low-nutrition villages, and television consumption, after sex, was the most likely of these predictors to contribute to variation in preferences (probability mass >95% when modelling only variables with zero-order associations with preferences, but only 90% when modelling all possible predictors). In contrast, we found no likely link with nutritional status. We thus found evidence that where media access and nutritional status are confounded, media is the more likely predictor of body ideals.

Citation

Jucker, J., Thornborrow, T., Beierholm, U., Burt, D., Barton, R., Evans, E., …Boothroyd, L. (2017). Nutritional status and the influence of TV consumption on female body size ideals in populations recently exposed to the media. Scientific Reports, 7(1), Article 8438. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-08653-z

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 17, 2017
Online Publication Date Aug 16, 2017
Publication Date Aug 16, 2017
Deposit Date Jul 19, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Scientific Reports
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 7
Issue 1
Article Number 8438
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-08653-z
Publisher URL https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-08653-z

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.






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