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The Influence of Social Comparison on Visual Representation of One's Face
Can the effects of social comparison extend beyond explicit evaluation to visual self-representation—a perceptual stimulus that is objectively verifiable, unambiguous, and frequently updated? We morphed images of participants' faces with attractive and unattractive references. With access to a...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2012
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3360758/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22662124 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036742 |
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author | Zell, Ethan Balcetis, Emily |
author_facet | Zell, Ethan Balcetis, Emily |
author_sort | Zell, Ethan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Can the effects of social comparison extend beyond explicit evaluation to visual self-representation—a perceptual stimulus that is objectively verifiable, unambiguous, and frequently updated? We morphed images of participants' faces with attractive and unattractive references. With access to a mirror, participants selected the morphed image they perceived as depicting their face. Participants who engaged in upward comparison with relevant attractive targets selected a less attractive morph compared to participants exposed to control images (Study 1). After downward comparison with relevant unattractive targets compared to control images, participants selected a more attractive morph (Study 2). Biased representations were not the products of cognitive accessibility of beauty constructs; comparisons did not influence representations of strangers' faces (Study 3). We discuss implications for vision, social comparison, and body image. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3360758 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-33607582012-06-01 The Influence of Social Comparison on Visual Representation of One's Face Zell, Ethan Balcetis, Emily PLoS One Research Article Can the effects of social comparison extend beyond explicit evaluation to visual self-representation—a perceptual stimulus that is objectively verifiable, unambiguous, and frequently updated? We morphed images of participants' faces with attractive and unattractive references. With access to a mirror, participants selected the morphed image they perceived as depicting their face. Participants who engaged in upward comparison with relevant attractive targets selected a less attractive morph compared to participants exposed to control images (Study 1). After downward comparison with relevant unattractive targets compared to control images, participants selected a more attractive morph (Study 2). Biased representations were not the products of cognitive accessibility of beauty constructs; comparisons did not influence representations of strangers' faces (Study 3). We discuss implications for vision, social comparison, and body image. Public Library of Science 2012-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC3360758/ /pubmed/22662124 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036742 Text en Zell, Balcetis. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Zell, Ethan Balcetis, Emily The Influence of Social Comparison on Visual Representation of One's Face |
title | The Influence of Social Comparison on Visual Representation of One's Face |
title_full | The Influence of Social Comparison on Visual Representation of One's Face |
title_fullStr | The Influence of Social Comparison on Visual Representation of One's Face |
title_full_unstemmed | The Influence of Social Comparison on Visual Representation of One's Face |
title_short | The Influence of Social Comparison on Visual Representation of One's Face |
title_sort | influence of social comparison on visual representation of one's face |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3360758/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22662124 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0036742 |
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