The Effect Of Television Commercials On Mood And Body Dissatisfaction: The Role Of Appearance-Schema Activation

Exposure to television food advertising primes food-related cognitions and triggers motivation to eat

“…The finding that exposure to television food advertising increased the number of food words produced on our word stem completion task mirrors observations that exposure to media images portraying the thin ideal led to the generation of more appearance-related words on Tiggemann et al's (2004) original word stem task (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2002Tiggemann & Slater, 2004). In line with these latter studies, the size of the priming effects on cognitive accessibility observed here was small to medium.…”

“…Unlike some of the tasks listed above (lexical decision task, affectmisattribution procedure), it has the added benefit that it does not prime the to-be-measured construct. In addition, the word stem task is particularly suitable for experimental studies of television advertising because of its demonstrated responsiveness to manipulations of media exposure (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2002Tiggemann & Slater, 2004). Using a similar task, van Koningsbruggen, Stroebe, Papies and Aarts (2011) recently demonstrated activation of the dieting goal in chronic dieters who reminded themselves of this goal upon exposure to food cues.…”

Longer‐term implications of responsiveness to ‘thin‐ideal’ television: support for a cumulative hypothesis of body image disturbance?

“…Guided by this rationale, the present study sought to integrate correlational and experimental designs by examining longitudinally the relationship between immediate responses to media images and the development of body dissatisfaction over a 2-year period of time. In an earlier experimental study (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2002a) it was found that girls, but not boys, who viewed 20 commercials containing females who epitomize the thin ideal experienced significantly greater body dissatisfaction than girls and boys who viewed 20 commercials that did not contain these images. A subset of those girls and boys still remaining at school from this experimental study were followed up 2 years later to trace their development of body dissatisfaction.…”

Thin ideals in music television: A source of social comparison and body dissatisfaction

“…The word-stem completion task (Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2002) was designed to access appearance-schema activation. This is an implicit task that presents participants with 20 three-letter word stems that can be completed to form either an appearance-related or nonappearance-related word.…”

“…Despite television's more pervasive influence, relatively fewer studies have employed televised images of thinness. Nevertheless, those few have likewise found increases in state body dissatisfaction or negative mood following exposure to television commericals (Cattarin, Thompson, Thomas, & Williams, 2000;Hargreaves & Tiggemann, 2002;Heinberg & Thompson, 1995;Lavine, Sweeney, & Wagner, 1999). However, no study has investigated the effect of thin idealized images as portrayed in television program content on mood or body satisfaction.…”