Religious-body affirmations protect body esteem for women who base self-worth on appearance or others’ approval

Abstract

Women who base their self-worth on appearance or others’ approval are especially vulnerable to low body esteem when they view media images of thin models. We explored one way religion might mitigate the harmful media effects in these women. We tested whether basing self-worth on appearance or others’ approval was positively related to body comparisons and body surveillance. We tested whether reading religious body-affirming statements enhanced feelings of being loved, which would increase body esteem in women who base self-worth on appearance or others’ approval. This experiment manipulated the type of body-affirming statements (religious, spiritual, control) and assessed women's body esteem before and after they viewed thin models. Results showed basing self-worth on appearance or others’ approval was positively related to body comparisons and surveillance. Furthermore, reading religious body-affirmations increased feeling loved, which in turn increased weight esteem in women who based self-worth on appearance or others’ approval.

Keywords:

• religion
• religiosity
• spiritual
• body-image
• conditions of self-worth
• women

Acknowledgement

We thank Konner Nelson and Michael Morton for their assistance with data collection.

Notes

1. Because random assignment was compromised when selecting women concerned about others’ approval, we compared conditions on key variables. Preliminary analyses revealed the conditions were equivalent in terms of BMI, importance of religion, and initial body esteem. That is, oneway (condition) ANOVAs showed the groups did not differ in BMI (M = 22.4 to M = 23.2, p = .84), religious importance (M = 3.08 to M = 3.42, p = .52), Time 1 weight esteem (M = 12.0 to M = 12.3, p = .98), and Time 1 appearance esteem (M = 39.3 to M = 41.7, p = .81). Similarly, selecting women strongly concerned with appearance compromised random assignment, yet additional analyses showed that conditions were comparable in BMI (M = 22.4 to M = 24.6, p = .38), religious importance (M = 3.00 to M = 3.15, p = .90), Time 1 weight esteem (M = 11.6 to M = 12.3, p = .88), and Time 1 appearance esteem (M = 38.5 to M = 41.2, p = .64).