When the East Meets the West: An Examination of Third-Person Perceptions About Idealized Body Image in Singapore

Abstract

This study found that, consistent with their counterparts in the United States, college women in Singapore reported a third-person perception when they were asked to evaluate possible effects of idealized body image portrayed in advertisements. The self-friend disparity of perceived media effects, although transcultural, is contingent on a few factors. These factors include the social distance between a perceiver and the comparison group, the perceiver's self-evaluated thinness, and the perceiver's perception of the benefit likelihood of media effects. The analyses of this study also show that a perceiver's perception of the social desirability of media portrayals differs conceptually from the same perceiver's perception of the benefit likelihood of media effects.

Notes

¹In this study, we define Caucasian as light-skinned humans of European origin and we use the term to describe models in the media.

²According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, BMI less than 18.5 is underweight, BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is normal, BMI between 25 and 29.9 is overweight, and BMI at or more than 30 is obese.

Note. We extracted the two factors using principle component analysis with varimax rotation method (N = 149).

Note. Standard deviations are in parentheses. In each row, F values refer to the results of our one-way repeated analysis of variance with planned contrasts. Values with different superscripts are significantly different from one another horizontally.

^a n = 76.

^b n = 73.

^c N = 149.

∗∗∗p < .001.

^a 1 = Chinese, 2 = Caucasian.

^# p ≤ .10. ∗p < .05. ∗∗p < .01. ∗∗∗p < .001 (N = 149).

³Because this analysis involved a within-subjects factor with three levels (i.e., perceived media influence), it might violate the independence assumption and inflated the F value. To account for the violations of compound symmetry and sphericity, we applied the Greenhouse-Geisser epsilon and the Huynh-Feldt epsilon corrections.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stella C. Chia

Stella C. Chia (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 2003) is an associate professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include media effects, public opinion, and adolescents' behavior.