A word-stem completion task to assess implicit processing of appearance-related information.
OBJECTIVE
This paper reports on the development and utility of a new implicit measure of appearance-related information processing.


METHODS
A 20-item word-stem completion task was constructed, in which each word stem could be completed with either an appearance-related word or at least one non-appearance alternative. The measure was tested in four different experiments, most investigating the impact of acute exposure to media-portrayed thin idealised female images.


RESULTS
Exposure to media images or other appearance-related material led to the generation of more appearance- or weight-related words in both female and male samples.


CONCLUSIONS
It was concluded that the word-stem task has empirical utility as a simple, self-paced and sensitive outcome measure in experimental studies of media exposure. We conceptualise the word-stem task as a measure of appearance- and weight-schema activation.
Tiggemann
Marika
M
Flinders University of South Australia, School of Psychology, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia. marika.tiggeman@flinders.edu.au
Hargreaves
Duane
D
Polivy
Janet
J
McFarlane
Traci
T
D000293:Adolescent; D000339:Affect; D001504:Beauty; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D014825:Vocabulary