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Does Barbie Make Girls Want to Be Thin?
- 1. The Effect of Experimental Exposure to Images of Dolls on the Body Image of 5- to 8-Year-Old Girls PPSY 572 Research Methodology Christina Zavala, JeynNe Sanchez, & Alexis Moreno
- 3. “ I looked at a Barbie doll when I was 6 and said, ‘This is what I want to look like.’ I think a lot of little 6-year-old girls or younger even now are looking at that doll and thinking, ‘I want to be her.’”
- 16. Does Barbie Make Girls Want to Be Thin? PPSY 572 Research Methodology Christina Zavala, JeynNe Sanchez, & Alexis Moreno
Editor's Notes
- 2006
- Has had at least 47 cosmetic procedures.
- 3. A woman’s chances of having Barbie's figures are… “ The desire for thinness emerges in girls around age 6” (Lowes & Tiggemann, 2003, p. 135)
- During this exposure experiment… EMME: Plus size doll created in 2002 by Robert Tonner to honor Emme (Melissa Miller), supermodel host of E! Entertainment 3. To gauge the immediate psychological impact of Barbie on young girls’ desired body shape and body esteem.
- Researchers expected that the thinness of Barbie dolls would have a direct negative impact on girls’ body image- therefore, images of Emme dolls should not increase girls’ body dissatisfaction, compared with neutral images. Developmental change was anticipated so that… … because they no longer see Barbie dolls as aspirational role models and they are likely to react to sociocultural beauty stimuli through a more reflective process, having already internalized the thinness ideal as a cognitive structure that forms part of their self-concept.
- Participants consisted of one hundred and sixty-two participants age ranging from five ½ to eight ½ . Participants resided in East Sussex county of Southern England which is a predominately white middle-class community. Therefore, participants in this study consisted of over 90% Caucasian middle-class children. Participants were gathered from six primary schools in Southern England years 1, 2, and 3 which is equivalent to U.S kindergarten classes, grade 1, and grade 2. Schools in Southern England began a year earlier than classes in the U.S. Participants were gathered in a very specific environment which consisted of a overwhelming race, socioeconomic status, and school system which may have a negatively effected the overall level of external validity.
- Picture books were created in order to fit the central themes of the stories. Upon exposure, participants evaluated body image concerns through an evaluative measure of body esteem and pictorial measures of body shape. Image stimuli consisted of six images that were selected specifically for the story about Mira. The six images consisted of six happy scenes that centered on themes of shopping for clothes and getting ready to go to a birthday party. Three types of picture books were created in order to expose the girls to different image stimuli for each three conditions. Researches claimed to have created the images as equivalent as possible however the differences of the three picture books may have affected the overall results. Body esteem was measured through a brief questionnaire, nine items were selected from the R-BES. The study did not further explain how and why these nine items in particular were selected. Due to the young ages of the participants, questions were answered by choosing a picture of either a sad face with a rain cloud, a neutral face, or a happy face with a sun around it. The internal reliability discovered that the participants had trouble with three questions that were negatively worded. These questions when removed, resulted in good internal consistency. The questionnaire was problematic as it was used for young children which required adjustments. This may have affected the overall effectiveness of the R-BES questionnaire. Using the Child Figure Rating Scale, body dissatisfaction was scored by computing the actual-adult ideal figure discrepancy and actual-ideal figure discrepancy from colored pictures.
- The study was administered during school hours in groups of three, lasting approximately 15 minutes. The participants were told that they were participating in a study that looked at girls’ likes and dislikes. All participants had the same about of time to look at individual images and the picture book. It was emphasized to the participants that they were not taking a test and that there were no right or wrong answers. This is very important as the study was done at a school setting which is perhaps a conditioned “testing” environment. Confidentiality was “stressed” and the participants were encouraged to answer the questionnaires independently. The study was approved by the institutional ethics committee of the associated local university, head teachers of all participating schools, and received written consent from participants parents, and verbal consent from the participants.
- Researchers used a three-way multivariate analysis of variance (we might call it a three-way mixed ANOVA) to analyze the three dependent variables. So they used a 3x3x3 MANOVA with repeated measures on the last factor, to assess the overall impact of the exposure condition on the girls’ body image. Their findings provided support for the first hypothesis. Body dissatisfaction was significantly higher after girls had seen the Barbie doll images, compared with other images, F(1,153) = 7.53, p < .01, n = .05. There was no difference in body dissatisfaction after reported by the girls after exposure to Emme doll compared with neutral images.
- Researchers used a three-way multivariate analysis of variance with trend analysis to check for year group differences in body satisfaction. Older girls reported more extreme discrepancies between their actual and ideal body size with mean differences increasing from -.23 in Year 1 to -.63 in Year 2 to -.79 in Year 3. Furthermore, the detrimental effect of Barbie doll exposure on body dissatisfaction interacted significantly with year group as there were age related differences in girls responses with the means suggesting that Barbie exposure had a negative impact on the two younger year groups, but not on the oldest year group.
- In order to examine group differences in more detail researchers used SEM. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a powerful multivariate method allowing the evaluation of a series of simultaneous hypotheses about the impacts of latent and manifest variables on other variables while also taking measurement errors into account. It was developed for more accurate analysis of more complex data. The focus of this method is the hypothesized relationships among variables and it is typically communicated by drawing a picture called a path diagram.
- On this diagram, the squares are the observed variables and the circles are the latent variables, and the arrows represent paths connecting the variables. The variable at the base of the arrow had an effect on the variable at the end of the arrow. Solid lines indicate significant paths and dashed lines indicate insignificant paths. When looking at this model you can see that findings support the second hypothesis that to Barbie does have a direct negative effect on girls’ body dissatisfaction, making them want to be thinner, but only between the ages of 5 ½ and 7 ½ and not in Year 3 when the girls are 7 ½ to 8 ½. Instead in Year 3, it was the Emme doll that had a negative effective on these girls.
- It’s not that body-related information conveyed by dolls have direct impact on young girls’ body image, but by Barbie dolls specifically , which represent a distortedly thin body ideal. These ultrathin images not only lowered young girls’ body esteem but also decreased their satisfaction with their actual body size , leading them to desire a thinner body. This can lead to serious consequences such as depressed affect and unhealthy eating behaviors ~ eating disorders. Suggests, more realistically sized dolls may not only fail to prevent body dissatisfaction in girls aged over 7 but also have the undesirable, opposite effect of increasing it . Older girls, if they have already internalized the thinness ideal , then the depiction of a full body could represent a possible, but feared, future self .