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Study finds gender differences related to eating and body image
Andrea Lynn,
Humanities Editor
217-333-2177; andreal@uiuc.edu
Released
12/13/2006
|
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —
Researchers have discovered a subtle new difference between men and
women – this one occurring in the realm of eating.
In the new study of observed eating behavior in a social setting, young
men and women who perceived their bodies as being less than “ideal”
ate differing amounts of food after they were shown images of “ideal-bodied”
people of their own gender.
Lead researcher Kristen Harrison found that “in the presence of
same-gender peers, certain women eat less and certain men eat more following
exposure to ideal-body images – ‘certain’ in this
case referring to women and men who have discrepancies between their
actual body and the kind of body they think their peers idealize,”
Harrison said.
“In a nutshell,” Harrison said, “we found that, following
exposure to ideal-body images, men who are insecure about their bodies
eat more in front of other men, while women who are insecure about their
bodies eat less in front of other women.”
Harrison is a professor of speech
communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The co-authors of the study are Laramie D. Taylor, a professor of communication
at the University of California at Davis, and Amy Lee Marske, a teacher
at Libertyville High School in Libertyville, Ill.
The study findings appear in the December issue of Communication Research
in an article titled, “Women’s and Men’s Eating Behavior
Following Exposure to Ideal-Body Images and Text.”
Harrison, who has focused her scholarly research on issues of nutrition
and eating, perceptions of ideal-body weight and the impact of media
on them, randomly assigned the male and female subjects to be tested
in same-gender groups of three to nine people.
The subjects participated in one of four scenarios: Some were randomly
chosen to view slides of images of fit men and women that had no accompanying
text, some viewed slides that contained diet- and exercise-related text,
some viewed slides that contained irrelevant text, and the control groups
did not view any slides.
The participants who were to view slides were first asked to fill out
a short questionnaire measuring various demographic variables and “ought
discrepancies” – that is, discrepancies between their actual
body type and the body type they thought their same-sex peers expected
them to have; then they viewed one of the three PowerPoint presentations.
Following the presentations, they went to a second classroom where they
completed a follow-up questionnaire. It was in the second classroom
where food – in the form of pretzels – was present and where
the participants’ consumption was unobtrusively measured.
The 30 images for the female groups were drawn from fashion, lifestyle
and fitness magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Vogue, Shape and
Elle. The images for the male groups were from magazines such as Men’s
Health, Men’s Fitness and Muscle & Fitness.
For the experiment, 222 women and 151 men, who were average in body
weight, were recruited from introductory communication courses at two
large Midwestern universities. The study took place over 16 weekdays,
with 45-minute afternoon group sessions at 4:30, 5:15, 6 and 6:45 p.m.
– times when college students “are typically starting to
feel hungry for their evening meal, but are unlikely to have already
eaten,” the researchers wrote.
The students were told that they would be evaluating the appeal of rough
page layouts for a magazine under development.
The researchers found that exposure to ideal-body images with no text
or paired with body-relevant text led women with body-related discrepancies
to eat, on average, one less pretzel than other women, and men with
body-related discrepancies to eat, on average, three more pretzels than
other men.
How do these findings translate to everyday eating patterns, and what
are the long-term consequences?
“It is difficult to overstate the importance of everyday, moment-to-moment
decisions in shaping the quality of a life,” Harrison said.
She said that abstinence from just a few pretzels a day – amounting
to about 100 calories – can result in the loss of more than a
pound of fat during the course of a year, and the addition of a few
pretzels a day can do the opposite, which she conceded, doesn’t
sound that significant. However, if people are viewing “ideal-body
media” regularly, their body-weight and health could be significantly
affected, she said.
For example, “If a woman is a regular user of ideal-body media
such as fitness and fashion magazines, not to mention television programming
featuring advertisements for diet foods and products, she may be moved
to abstain from eating several times a day – even when she is
hungry – resulting in significant weight loss over time.”
Harrison noted that people thinking about the national obesity epidemic
might respond to such abstinence with, “Good! This is what should
happen.”
“But the fact that this happens even to skinny women means that
such weight loss could be unhealthy,” Harrison said.
“Similarly, a man who is vulnerable to ideal-male images due to
the presence of an actual body vs. ideal body self-discrepancy may be
moved to eat even when he is not hungry, just to reassure himself and
other men that he is sufficiently masculine.”
The findings of the current study also show that this effect occurs
regardless of body mass.
“Eating in response to external cues rather than internal hunger
signals is one of the first steps involved in the development of disordered
eating, be it anorexia, bulimia or compulsive eating. Our commercial
mass media are filled with such external cues.
“It is our hope that future studies will be devoted to furthering
our understanding of how young people, especially those who are most
vulnerable, can resist the pull of those cues.”
