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Category: Project

Description: In the body image literature, there are three ways of thinking about the ideal body shape. The first is from a first-person perspective, the body shape an individual would ideally like to have. The other two possibilities take a third-person perspective. The second type of ideal is which body shape is judged to be the most attractive to a potential romantic partner. The third and final type is which body shape represents a given cultural ideal. To our knowledge, no empirical study has made a direct comparison between all three of these possibilities. Therefore, in this study, we ask whether, for women in the Western World on average, these three versions of an ideal body shape correspond to each other. In addition, we ask what individual differences may drive variation in the ideal body shape. We aim to test this presumption by asking participants to make one of the three judgments using a matrix of 32 female bodies varying in two dimensions: muscle and adiposity. On each trial of the task, participants will be asked to select the position in the 2D body space represented by the body matrix that best represents: “your ideal body shape”, “the ideal body shape for Western culture” or “the most attractive body shape”. The Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-4 (SATAQ-4; Schaefer et al., 2015), Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q; Fairburn & Beglin, 1994), Drive for Muscularity Scale (DMS; McCreary & Sasse, 2000) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck et al., 1961) were used to assess individual differences drive variations in the ideal body.