Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Project

Description: Perceptions of body weight attractiveness can be manipulated through visual exposure to bodies at one weight extreme. This implies that body weight is coded relative to a central ‘norm’ or prototype. Cross-cultural research, however, shows differences between groups’ perceptions of body weight attractiveness in terms of preferences for specific weight ranges as well as overall differences in the perceived ‘ideal’ weight. Here we test for the first time whether visual exposure to body weight extremes can induce such localised changes in preferences within individuals. British and Chinese participants in Studies 1 and 3 rated 23 bodies of known BMI for attractiveness, before and after viewing underweight or overweight/obese bodies. Results of Study 1 and a combined analysis of Studies 1 and 3 together showed no evidence of significant changes in participants’ ‘ideal’ weight, but the groups which viewed obese bodies during adaptation rated bodies of BMI 30kg/m2 significantly more positively at post-test than those who had viewed underweight bodies. In Study 2, participants viewed 48 bodies of known BMI in a randomised order. Proportion of obese bodies viewed in the preceding 10 trials predicted more positive ratings of overweight/obese bodies, but not any other weight category. Together, these data strongly suggest that we can induce ‘local’ changes in body ideals through exposure but do not support a strict norm-based approach.