title: Automatic evaluation of body-related images.
abstract: An affective priming task was used to determine whether females automatically evaluate body-related images, and to establish whether this is moderated by appearance schematicity, thin internalisation, body dissatisfaction, and dietary restraint. In a within participants design, the valence congruence of the prime and target pairs was manipulated, as was the interval between them. Undergraduate females (N=87, Experiment 1 and N=72, Experiment 2) individually selected colour images as the primes. Each prime was presented briefly, followed by a target word which the participant judged as "good" or "bad". The dependent variable was response latency to the target word. Automatic evaluation was evident; responding to congruent pairs was faster than responding to incongruent pairs. The individual difference variables were not related to automaticity. The findings suggest that brief encounters with body-related images are likely to produce automatic affective responses in young women irrespective of body-related concerns.
authors.affiliation: University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia. k.watts@unsw.edu.au
authors.forename: Kaaren
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Watts
authors.forename: Jacquelyn
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cranney
authors.forename: Melanie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gleitzman