title: Single exposure to disclaimers on airbrushed thin ideal images increases negative thought accessibility.
abstract: Disclaimers on airbrushed thin ideal images can attract attention to the thin ideal standard promoted by the advertisements, which can be damaging rather than helpful. In this study, 48 female college students were exposed to a thin ideal image including a disclaimer, a neutral sentence, or nothing. Two weeks and two months after this, they were again exposed to the same image but with no accompanying text in any of the conditions. Negative thought accessibility was assessed three times, after each exposure to the thin-ideal image, using reaction time measures. Participants randomly assigned to the disclaimer condition systematically showed greater accessibility of negative thoughts than those in the other two conditions, irrespective of the time of measurement. These results suggest that disclaimers on airbrushed images may have some counter-productive effects by accentuating the problems that they precisely aim to address.
authors.affiliation: Center for Research on Cognition and Learning (CeRCA), CNRS UMR 7295, University of Poitiers and National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Poitiers, France. Electronic address: leila.selimbegovic@univ-poitiers.fr.
authors.forename: Leila
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Selimbegović
authors.affiliation: Center for Research on Cognition and Learning (CeRCA), CNRS UMR 7295, University of Poitiers and National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Poitiers, France.
authors.forename: Armand
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chatard
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000329:Advertising; D001828:Body Image / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008402:Mass Media; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D012649:Self Concept; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D013850:Thinking; D013851:Thinness / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: Airbrushed images; Disclaimer; Lexical decision; Negative thought; Thin ideal; Thought accessibility