e. their self-perception would improve as compared with the experimental groups exposed to the attractively thin supposed competitor); and (3) the effect would be similar with respect to self-esteem and exposure to the images. The secondary hypothesis was that the effect of exposure to the images would be mitigated by the fact that any subject was in an intimate relationship at the time of the experiment. The independent variables were the relative attractiveness of the supposed competitor and (for the secondary hypothesis) the involvement of the participant in an intimate relationship. The dependent variables were self-perception about body image, self-esteem, and (secondarily) the relevance of relationship status on the results. The first hypothesis was confirmed; the second hypothesis was not confirmed; the third hypothesis was not confirmed; and the secondary hypothesis was confirmed. Specifically, women shown an image of an attractively thin competitor did exhibit lower levels of satisfaction with their own body image; women shown the image of a comparatively unattractive competitor did not exhibit higher levels of satisfaction with their body image and there was not any reverse effect associated with exposure to less attractive competitors (i.e. their self-perception did not improve as compared with the experimental...

The secondary finding was that that the effect of exposure to the images was indeed mitigated by the fact that some subjects were in intimate relationships at the time of the experiment. The limitations of the study include: the subjective perception of facial attractiveness in the photographs, the use of only considerably overweight images instead of also testing photographs of less unattractive peers who were close in attractiveness to the subjects, and the exclusive use of college-age subjects instead of also testing women older than college age.
The principal findings of the experiment were that exposure to thinner images lowers a woman's self-evaluation of her own body but that there was not a comparable connection to self-esteem. The implications are that the effect of continual exposure to media images of unrealistically attractive females is less broad than it might be. The most logical possible extensions of the research would be to repeat it using the additional independent variables of photographs of less unattractive models for the unattractive images and using a broader population of subjects to include non-college-age subjects as…