TV Viewing, Body Image, and Eating Disorders in Fiji

TV Viewing and Body Image

Introduction

• Personal experiences shared about the impact of TV viewing on body image and eating habits.
• Feelings of inadequacy based on comparing oneself to TV characters.
• Cultural context in Fiji where larger women are traditionally accepted, contrasting with the thin ideal portrayed on TV.

Social Learning Theory (SLT) and Anorexia

• Attention: Observing behavior to enable memory encoding.
• Retention: Retaining the behavior in memory through conscious and subconscious rehearsal.
• Motor Reproduction: Physically capable of coordinating motor skills and reproducing the behavior.
• Motivation: Imitating the behavior if the role model was reinforced or punished (vicarious reinforcement).
• Application: Social Learning Theory (SLT) and Anorexia application.

SLT and Celebrity Role Models

• Attention: Teenagers admire celebrity role models who they perceive to be desirable and of a high social status.
• Retention: Teenagers observe celebrity role models promoting exercise routines and diets regularly on magazines, TV, social media therefore this memory is retained.
• Motor Reproduction: Teenagers are physically capable of controlling their dietary intake and exercise routines. They identify themselves to the role model in some form e.g. similarity or success.
• Motivation: Teenagers see their role models rewarded with ‘likes’ on social media and with magazine endorsements for images of skinny bodies. This vicarious reinforcement motivates teenagers to imitate the celebrity role model’s diet and exercise routines.

Becker (2002) Contemporary Study: Eating Behaviors and Attitudes

• Topic: Learning Theories.
• Focus: Eating behaviors and attitudes following prolonged exposure to television among ethnic Fijian adolescent girls.
• Objectives: To describe and evaluate Becker’s contemporary study.

Cultural Context of Fiji

• Fijian cultural norms include healthy appetites and full-figured women.
• Historically, slim women were seen as weak.

Cultural Differences: Western World vs. Fijian Communities

• Western World: 'Media savvy'.
• Fijian Communities: 'Media-naïve'.
• Fijian adolescent girls initially believed TV shows like E.R., and Friends were news stories.
• They did not understand that the people they were seeing were actors or the difference between a scripted sitcom and real-life.

Becker's Study Details

Aim

• To investigate the impact of prolonged exposure to TV on disordered eating attitudes and behaviours among media-naïve indigenous Fijian adolescent girls.

Variables

• Independent Variable (IV): Length of time Fijian adolescent girls were exposed to TV media.
• Dependent Variable (DV): 26-item Eating Attitudes Test (EAT) score over 20 indicating eating disorder.

Methodology

• Naturalistic experiment.
• Fiji was chosen because of:
  • Low prevalence of anorexia (only 1 case in mid-1990’s).
  • Media-naïve population, a lack of exposure to TV until 1995.
  • Cultural norms of healthy appetites and full-figured women.

Participants

• 2 sets of participants in 1995 and 1998 were compared.
• Matched-pairs design.
  • 1995: 63 participants, mean age 17.3 years old, mean BMI 24.5.
  • 1998: 65 participants, mean age 16.9 years old, mean BMI 24.9.

Procedure

• First experimental group was studied in 1995 (exposed to TV for less than 1 month).
• Second experimental group was studied in 1998 (exposed to TV for 3 years).
• Quantitative data: height, BMI and EAT-26 survey scores were collected.
• Qualitative data: semi-structured interviews and self-reports on purging and binging eating behavior.
• In 1998 sample narrative data was audiotaped and transcribed using thematic analysis.
• All participants were fluent in English, but the experimenter and a Fijian translator helped to explain the meanings of unfamiliar words to ensure comprehension.

Results

• EAT-26 scores over 20 (indicating eating disorder) increased from 12.7\% in 1995 to 29.2\% in 1998.
• In 1998, EAT-26 scores were significantly associated with dieting.
• Self-report data of self-induced vomiting to control weight increased from 0\% in 1995 to 11.3\% in 1998.
• In the 1998 sample interviewed, 77\% participants said TV had influenced their own body image.

Conclusions

• TV media exposure has a negative impact on the disordered eating attitudes in Fijian adolescent girls who previously had no incidence of anorexia or bulimia.
• Western media imagery shows role models whose thin body types are valued, which promotes the risk of developing an eating disorder through body dissatisfaction and internalisation of values.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Study

Reliability

• Quantitative measures of BMI and EAT-26 survey can be replicated easily increasing reliability.
• Naturalistic experiment reduces control over extraneous variables and makes it difficult to exactly replicate these conditions.

Validity & Cause and Effect

• Cause and effect cannot be established between TV media and eating behaviors as other environmental factors e.g. availability of fast food restaurants are not accounted for.
• High inter-rater reliability as interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed so other researchers can read over what the girls said.

Generalisability

• A unrepresentative small sample size of Fijian adolescent girls was used in this study therefore results cannot be applied to males or children younger than 16 and adults over 18.
• The indigenous ethnic sample used from a collectivist society makes it difficult to generalise findings to individualistic societies with different ethnic groups.

Application

• Proposed to be the first study in a developing society examining TV media exposure and eating behaviors.
• Allows insight in to the development of eating disorders and preventative strategies which can be used by other countries.
• Fijian government encouraged to devote more time and money to helping schoolgirls with depression and eating disorders brought on by TV viewing. Currently, Fiji spends little on this because eating disorders are very rare there.

Ethics

• Informed consent was given by participants and their parents.
• However, participants’ eating attitudes and behaviours were altered, purging and binging inflicted physical harm and media exposure caused psychological harm and negative body image. Potential for lifetime eating disorders to persist.

Validity

• Matched-pairs design for age, gender, ethnicity, BMI, and education increases validity so cause and effect can be established.
• Naturalistic experiment increases ecological validity as a real-life setting, introduction of media, is studied.
• Naturalistic experiment reduces demand characteristics as participants are in their natural setting.
• However the experimenter and translator emphasized particular English words which participants may have been unfamiliar with, this could have caused experimenter effects for example an emphasis on ‘purge’ and ‘binge’ causing higher rates of these words in self-report data.