Dieting 2.0!: Moderating effects of Instagrammers' body image and Instafame on other Instagrammers’ dieting intention

Highlights

• Experiment 1 tested effects of Instagram photos and viewers' individual difference factors.

• Experiment 2 tested effects of photos, fame, and viewers' individual differences factors.

• Photo types moderate effects of narcissism and social comparison on dieting intention.

• Instafame levels moderate effects of narcissism and social comparison on dieting intention.

• Implications for Instagram-based campaigns about weight management are discussed.

Abstract

Drawing from the literature on narcissism, social comparison, and eating disorder, two experiments examined the interaction effects of exposure to different types of body image presented in Instagrammers' photos, photo posters' Instafame, and peer Instagrammers' individual difference factors on dieting intention. Experiment 1 (N = 230) tested two-way interaction effects between Instagrammers' posts (selfies vs. group selfies vs. photos taken by others vs. neutral photos) and peer Instagrammers' individual difference factors (narcissism, social comparison, and eating disorder). Experiment 2 (N = 322) tested three-way interaction effects among Instagram posts (selfies vs. group selfies vs. photos taken by others vs. neutral photos), Instafame (high followers vs. low followers), and peer viewers' individual difference factors (narcissism, social comparison, and eating disorder). Experiment 1 provides robust findings about the moderating effects Instagrammers' photos have on the association between peer Instagrammers' individual difference factors and their dieting intention. Experiment 2 sheds some lights on the moderating roles of Instagrammers' photos and Instafame. The results of both experiments signify the importance of examining the influence of social media users’ psychological characteristics in understanding the effects of exposure to social media posts. Theoretical contributions to the extant literature on body image and practical implications for social media-based health campaigns about weight management, dieting, and eating disorder are discussed.

Introduction

Instagrammers refer to users of the photo sharing and social networking service Instagram (Miles, 2013) and Instafame refers to fame emerging on Instagram (Dewey, 2014). The present study aims to test the moderating effects of viewing different kinds of Instagrammers' posts and different levels of Instafame on peer Instagrammers' intention to diet. The theoretical model proposes that Instagrammers' photo types, Instafame, and peer viewers’ individual difference factors will interact to influence dieting intention. Among various individual difference factors, the current study focused on narcissistic personality (Raskin & Terry, 1988), social comparison orientation (SCO) (Festinger, 1954), and eating disorder (Thompson & Heinberg, 1999).

The main premise is that narcissists would react differently to Instagram images than non-narcissists do. The sense of grandiosity and love of self-appearance lead a narcissist to show different attitudes toward one's own and others' body image and eating behaviors (Davis et al., 1996, Davis et al., 1997). Studying how individuals' appearance-related attributes affect the way they engage in a diet based on cues from social media contents is worthy of investigation. This could add to our understanding of the effects of interaction between social media posts and viewer characteristics on eating behavior. Additionally, SCO means being inclined to compare oneself to others (Baird et al., 2014, Richins, 1991). People with high SCO tend to show higher sensitivity to visual images of other people, especially to those images in social media environments. Visual images on Instagram prompt social comparison (de Vries, Möller, Wieringa, Eigenraam, & Hamelink, 2017). Selfies are particularly relevant to narcissism and social comparison because of their unique nature of self-control over body pose and camera direction (Jin & Muqaddam, 2018). The goal of present study is to make theoretical contributions to the literature on social media effects and ultimately provide practical implications for social media-based health campaigns about weight management, dieting, and eating disorder.

Media effects on body image perception and eating behavior have enjoyed extensive and interesting body of research (Karazsia, Murnen, & Tylka, 2017), and is developing in the domain of social media studies (Perloff et al., 2014). There are abundant theoretical discussions about and empirical studies on the psychological effects of viewing idealized media images on wellbeing of audience members (Halliwell, 2013, Harrison and Cantor, 1997, Thompson and Heinberg, 1999, Thompson et al., 1991). Particularly, concerns have been raised about how media consumption is associated with body dissatisfaction (McLean et al., 2016, Tiggemann, 2003) and eating disorder, specifically within the female population (Field et al., 1999, Turner et al., 1997). Moreover, studies have shown that contents from mass media, whether in print or TV, affect people's dieting intention and eating behavior (Stice, Schupak-Neuberg, Shaw, & Stein, 1994). While the majority of studies about media effects on eating have focused on mass media (TV, magazines, movies, etc), fewer studies have paid attention to the effects of social media contents on eating behavior (Cohen & Blaszczynski, 2015). Notwithstanding, recent body of research has considered the effects of using Facebook on social comparison (Fardouly & Vartanian, 2015) particularly in relation to physical appearance (Cohen and Blaszczynski, 2015, Fardouly et al., 2015). Social media may affect users' eating disorders by stimulating peer comparison that leads to anxiety or body dissatisfaction (Jin, 2018a, Williams and Ricciardelli, 2014).

Contributing to this line of research, it's worth considering dynamic relationships among three factors: types of social media platforms, types of social media posts, and users' personality and individual difference factors. Viewing contents in a visual image-centered app like Instagram is different from text-centered or video-centered social media platforms. The focus of attention in an app like Instagram would be on the photos and the cues people perceive from them, based on the photos' attributes (contents, angle, pose, directionality, filter, etc.). Recent studies tested the effects of viewing different types of Instagram photos such as selfies and group selfies (groupies) (Jin and Muqaddam, 2018, Wang et al., 2017b) but only a few experiments tested the effects of Instagram posts in relation to eating behavior (Jin, 2018a). How does viewing images of other people on Instagram lead to thinking about one's own body? One possibility for this line of research is studying the effects of different photo types on weight control intentions. It would be interesting to see, for instance, if selfies have different effects than neutral photos. The difference is presumably due to the presence of human factor in the post and the personality cues selfies signal to audiences (Jin and Muqaddam, 2018, Liu et al., 2016). Selfies are typically perceived as narcissistic and perceived narcissism is associated with vanity and exhibiting one's appearance (Corning et al., 2006, Halpern et al., 2016). Based on that, one might ask if the portrayal of narcissistic others leads people to think about their own appearance and how they compare to others in their social environment.

The current study tests if people react differently to selfies, group selfies, photos taken by others, and neutral photos of non-human objects and how this exposure consequently affects dieting intention. It is interesting to see the difference in consequent behavioral intentions across different types of photos, which would entail different perception and evaluation processes. The current experiment further examines if the variance in one's own narcissism, SCO, and eating disorder interact with other Instagrammers' different types of photos and different levels of Instafame in influencing weight control intention (i.e., dieting intention). This study aims to fill the gap regarding the effects of social media on dieting intention. More specifically, it will consider users' individual difference factors as an important dimension in studying social media effects on eating behavior. To this end, the current experiment examines if the influence of individual differences factors will be moderated by viewing different Instagrammers' posts with different types of photos and different levels of Instafame.