We tested the effectiveness of a positive appearance or functionality reflective writing task on women's body satisfaction and whether these writing task reflections offered any protective advantage when exposed to idealised imagery. Young adult women (N=230; Mage=23years) wrote about positive elements of either their appearance or their body's functionality, and then were exposed to images of scenery, or thin and attractive models presented in posed or active form. Direction and amount of social comparison were also examined. Women reported immediate gains in both appearance and physical functionality satisfaction regardless of reflection type. However, neither reflection was protective against decreased satisfaction after exposure to idealised images. Greater upward comparison on either appearance or physical functionality domains was related to poorer outcomes. Our reflection task has potential to shift body focus but future research could examine multiple sessions and reflections on a broader range of self-relevant domains.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 14. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 27 March 2018.
All research outputs
#2,486,520
of 25,382,440 outputs
Outputs from Body Image
#350
of 1,078 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#46,617
of 332,159 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Body Image
#9
of 14 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,382,440 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 90th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,078 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 32.5. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 67% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 332,159 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 14 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 35th percentile – i.e., 35% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
