Reinvestigating the beauty match up hypothesis and social comparison in food advertisements

"The use of attractive models as a means to grab consumers' attention and influence their product evaluations and purchase intentions is a common occurrence among advertisers. Research shows that recurrent exposure to ads featuring models with idealized bodies can lead to negative self-evaluations, development of eating disorders, and depression, among other negative outcomes. Given their greater likelihood to express discontent with their bodies when compared to their male counterparts, most of the literature on this issue has focused on women as the population under study. However, a third of all individuals suffering from eating disorders in the U.S. are males. This dissertation explores how males evaluate models featured in snack food advertisements when their bodies conform (or not) with advertising industry norms, and the effects of the pairing of different models with products perceived to be healthy (vs. unhealthy) on participants' evaluations of the self, the product, and the ad. Results showed a significant interaction between exposure to idealized bodies in advertisements and upward social comparison, indicating that respondents with higher social comparison scores had more negative evaluations of the ads. Exposure to ads with idealized bodies predicts participants' engagement in upward social comparison. Further, our results show that upward social comparison was a significant predictor of body dissatisfaction. Yet, overall participants had better evaluations of the ads when presented with unhealthy foods and models with idealized bodies, which stresses the need for guidelines for model casting in advertising."--Page ii.