Body Dissatisfaction and College Women’s Visual Attention to Advertising Images of Women’s Bodies

Though researchers have long been interested in the association between exposure to thin-ideal media images and women’s body dissatisfaction, few have examined the role lower-level processes like visual attention play in this association. In the current study, 89 college women viewed media images of thin female models taken from print and online catalogues. Using an eye-tracker, we examined how the time-course of visual attention was associated with participants’ body dissatisfaction (both overall and with respect to specific body parts). Each participant’s unique profile of dissatisfaction predicted body-part specific patterns of looking. Initial looks tended to focus on the areas of the body with which a given woman was most dissatisfied – the portions of the image most likely to result in upward comparisons. However, women’s visual attention tended to move away from these areas of the images as they continued to look. Overall, our findings support an interaction between body-dissatisfaction and early (potentially unconscious) attention to thin-ideal images.