The Effects of Media on Body Image: A Meta-Analysis

One article we are using is titled The Effects of Media on Body Image: A Meta-Analysis.  This article obviously provides research on the effects of media on the body image.  However, this article is a little different from others.  Research shows that when women are shown pictures of other thin women, there seems to have little effect on the viewer.  But when women are shown pictures of other overweight women, there seems to be a positive effect on the viewer.  This information sticks out from others mainly because of the little effect that the pictures of skinny women have on women.  It should be interesting to see how this information fits in with the rest of our research once we dig a little bit deeper.

Background on Project

I am currently a sophomore at the University of Michigan studying Communications and German.  My Communications 111 group and I are researching the effects the media has on both men and women.  We are trying to analyze the difference of effects between the two groups.  It's important to us because our group members have expressed interest in both the fitness and media fields.  Media plays such a big roll in our lives today, and the correlation of body image and media seems to be almost higher than ever.  We hope to figure out the effects of that correlation and analyze the significance between genders in today's media.

Me