A Person-by-Situation Account of Why Some People More Frequently Engage in Upward Appearance Comparison Behaviors in Everyday Life
Section snippets
Participants
A total of 211 women were recruited via advertising of the study across three university sites and from the general population via advertising on the websites of eating disorder–related organizations. Forty participants were excluded due to: (a) completing less than three EMA surveys (n = 27), (b) no baseline measures completed (n = 11), (c) failure to report their unique ID number, thus preventing linkage of EMA and baseline data (n = 10), or (d) being male (n = 2). This resulted in a final sample of
Compliance rates and descriptive statistics
The average number of responses completed per participant (out of a possible 42) was 21.8 (SD = 9.2). Average time lag between within-day assessments was 142.3 minutes (SD = 84.0). Forty-eight percent (1,214 of 2,531) assessments were within 2 hours of each other, and a further 40% (1,008 assessments) were between 2 and 4 hours apart.
Bivariate correlations between compliance rates for EMA surveys and trait measures were nonsignificant for BMI, r(161) = -.05, p = .54, two-tailed, trait body
Discussion
While the influence of trait-level variables on state appearance comparisons are well documented (e.g., Fitzsimmons-Craft et al., 2012, Leahey et al., 2007, Ridolfi et al., 2011), the contribution of contextual factors for these comparisons has received considerably less research attention. Guided by Person × Situation Theory (Mischel & Shoda, 1995), the present study evaluated the possibility that the effect of trait body image (in particular, internalization and body dissatisfaction) on state
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
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