Abstract
The aim of this paper was to investigate the effect of different types of TikTok dance challenge videos on young women's body satisfaction. Study 1 involved 262 women aged between 18 and 25 years, who were randomly assigned to watch TikTok videos featuring either thin dancers, large dancers, or amusing animal videos. Body satisfaction significantly increased after watching large dancer TikTok videos and decreased after watching thin dancer TikTok videos, although this decrease was not significant. Study 2 replicated and extended study 1 and involved 280 women aged between 18 and 25 years. Females body satisfaction significantly decreased after watching the thin dancer TikTok videos and significantly increased after watching the large dancer TikTok videos. There was no significant difference between the participants in terms of state appearance comparison. Females in the thin dancer condition engaged in upward social comparison, whereas the females in the large dancer condition engaged in downward social compression. The impact of video type was not moderated either by trait appearance comparison, or thin ideal internalization. The effect of video type was not mediated by state appearance comparison but was fully mediated by the direction of social comparison. Study 3 involved 375 women aged between 18 and 25 years and found that body satisfaction was lower after watching the thin dancers than after watching the large dancers. This study shows that findings from the previous two studies could not be explained by the demand characteristics in the design of these studies. All three studies show that exposure to large dancers on TikTok has a positive impact on women's body satisfaction, whereas exposure to thin dancers has a negative impact on women's body satisfaction. The implications of these findings for the design of social media are discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 107856 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | Computers in Human Behavior |
| Volume | 147 |
| Early online date | 5 Jul 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 31 Oct 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Data availability: Data will be made available on request.Funding
Qualtrics was used to create the online survey, and an anonymous link was then distributed on social media sites and via Prolific. They were provided with information concerning the purpose of the study before they consented to take part in the study. After consenting, participants were asked for their age, nationality ethnicity and their weight and height so we could calculate their BMI. We then surveyed their social media use and randomly allocated them to one of the three conditions, where they were shown six TikTok videos that were appropriate to their conditions. Before and after the set of videos we measured their body satisfaction and after each video they were either asked to rate the attractiveness of the dancer (on a scale from 0 to 10) or how amusing the animal video was (on a scale from 0 to 10). The study was granted ethical approval by the Department of Psychology Research Ethics committee at the University of Bath.Qualtrics was used to create the online survey, and an anonymous link was then distributed via Prolific. After reading the information page, where they were told the aim of the study, participants consented to take part in the study. They were then asked for their age, nationality, ethnicity and BMI. We surveyed their social media use, trait appearance comparison and thin ideal idealization. They were randomly allocated to one of three conditions, where they viewed six TikTok videos that were appropriate to their conditions. Before and after viewing the TikTok videos, we measured their body satisfaction and their mood. The participants in the thin dancer and large dancer conditions were asked to rate the attractiveness of the dancers and how thin the dancers were after each video. Once they had viewed all six videos, we measured state appearance comparison and direction of social comparison for participants in the dancing conditions. The study was granted ethical approval from the Department of Psychology Research Ethics committee at the University of Bath.We did not find that thin ideal internalization moderated the effect of watching TikTok videos on body satisfaction and thus we did not find evidence to support Hypothesis 2.3. This finding is consistent with other research that has also failed to find a moderating effect of thin ideal internalization (Giorgianni et al., 2020; Mulgrew et al., 2014; Mulgrew & Hennes, 2015; Slater et al., 2019; Tiggemann & Velissaris, 2020; Williamson & Karazsia, 2018). A recent study involving TikTok also found no evidence that fit ideal internalization moderated the effect of TikTok use and body dissatisfaction (Pryde & Prichard, 2022). Furthermore, trait appearance comparison did not moderate the effect of watching TikTok videos on body satisfaction, which does not support Hypothesis 2.4 and is also not consistent with previous research (Brown & Tiggemann, 2020). Participants in the thin dancer condition did not engage in more state appearance comparison than participants in the large dancer condition. Furthermore, we did not find that state appearance comparison mediated the effect of type of TikTok video on body satisfaction, which does not support Hypothesis 2.5 and is not consistent with previous research on social media in general (Brown & Tiggemann, 2020; Mulgrew et al., 2018; Tiggemann et al., 2020; Tiggemann & Velissaris, 2020; Tiggemann & Zinoviev, 2019) and TikTok in particular (Mink & Szymanski, 2022; Pryde & Prichard, 2022). However, we did find support for the role of appearance comparison when we examined the direction of social comparison. One of the most interesting findings in study 2 was the significant and large difference between the thin dancer condition and the large dancer condition in terms of the direction of social comparison. The majority of participants in the thin dancer condition engaged in upwards social comparison, whereas the majority of participants in the large dancer condition engaged in downward social comparison. Most research concerning social media and appearance comparison has consistently found that young women are engaged in upward social comparison, and this has a negative impact on body satisfaction (Brown & Tiggemann, 2020; Mulgrew et al., 2018; Tiggemann et al., 2020; Tiggemann & Velissaris, 2020; Tiggemann & Zinoviev, 2019). Fardouly et al. (2017) attempted to explore both upward and downward social comparison but were unable to investigate the impact of downward comparison because of the low frequency of downward comparison. Thus, there has been very little research which has investigated the impact of downward social comparison in relation to social media and body satisfaction. Therefore, it is interesting to see that in study 2 we found that participants in the large dancer condition engaged in downward comparison, and this had a positive impact on their body satisfaction. Furthermore, the direction of appearance comparison fully mediated the effect of watching TikTok videos, which is consistent with Hypothesis 2.6.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
- Human-Computer Interaction
- General Psychology