Exposing digital posing: The effect of social media self-disclaimer captions on women’s body dissatisfaction, mood, and impressions of the user

•Self-disclaimers did not reduce the perceived realism of social media images.•Self-disclaimers did not reduce appearance comparisons with social media images.•Self-disclaimers did not mitigate impact of idealized images on mood and body dissatisfaction.•Subject judged less warm, equally moral and c...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Body image 2020-03, Vol.32, p.150-154
Hauptverfasser: Livingston, Julianne, Holland, Elise, Fardouly, Jasmine
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:Volltext
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:•Self-disclaimers did not reduce the perceived realism of social media images.•Self-disclaimers did not reduce appearance comparisons with social media images.•Self-disclaimers did not mitigate impact of idealized images on mood and body dissatisfaction.•Subject judged less warm, equally moral and competent, when viewed with self-disclaimers. This experimental study examined the impact of attaching self-disclaimer captions (i.e., account holder’s captions about the inauthenticity of their appearance) to idealized and edited social media images on 18- to 25-year-old Australian women’s (N = 201) body dissatisfaction, mood, perceived realism of social media images, appearance comparisons, and impressions of the user. Participants were shown images of either: (1) an attractive woman, (2) the same woman with self-disclaimer captions, or (3) appearance-neutral images. Self-disclaimers did not ameliorate the higher body dissatisfaction and negative mood experienced by women who viewed idealized images. Images with self-disclaimers were also not perceived as less realistic, nor did women compare themselves less to these images than women who viewed the same images without self-disclaimers. The idealized woman in the images was, however, perceived as less warm, but equally moral and competent when viewed with self-disclaimers. These results suggest that self-disclaimers may not be effective at protecting young women from the harmful effects of unrealistic appearance ideals on social media.
ISSN:1740-1445
1873-6807
DOI:10.1016/j.bodyim.2019.12.006