Despite the growing impact of social media, new research suggests that men’s perception of their close female friends’ muscularity preferences has a stronger influence on their body dissatisfaction. The findings have been published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
“While receiving more attention in recent years, men’s body image research is still underdeveloped. Many still view body image as a women’s issue. We wanted to explore a novel area of men’s body image that focused on mediated and non-mediated social comparison groups,” said study author Mark A. Flynn (@MarkAllenFlynn), an assistant professor at Emmanuel College.
“There is a lack of research that compares the influence of offline peers vs. social media connections on our body satisfaction. When men compare themselves to social groups like their close friends or their social media connections, which group is likely to be more connected to how men feel about their bodies? This question helped us conceptualize and develop the study.”
For the study, the researchers had 277 men, who were about 36 years old on average, complete a scientific survey regarding their body satisfaction and perceptions of ideal body types.
The men were shown male silhouettes with varying levels of muscularity and asked to indicate which best represented their own muscularity. They then indicated which silhouettes represented their ideal body type, and also selected what they believed was perceived as ideal among their close male friends, close female friends, men on social media, and women on social media.
Discrepancies between the participants’ self-reported muscularity and their ideal muscularity were associated with increased body dissatisfaction. The perceived ideals of male and female off-line peers and men and women on social networking sites also played a role in men’s satisfaction with their muscle mass (but not satisfaction with their body fat.)
“It is important to understand the power of perception on men’s body satisfaction. When men compare their own level of muscularity to what (they perceive) a comparison group thinks is the ideal level of muscularity, there tends to be a prominent gap between these two bodies. This is known as an actual-ideal discrepancy, and in line with previous research, we found this gap was related to lower body satisfaction,” Flynn told PsyPost.
“Our study shows that the audience men are imagining for their perceptions of the muscular ideal matters significantly. The results demonstrate that actual-ideal discrepancies existed with four comparison groups: close male friends, close female friends, men on social media, and women on social media. All four of these comparison group perceptions were linked to lower body satisfaction.”
“Interestingly, men’s offline female friends were the most impactful group on their body satisfaction. This is particularly noteworthy when much of the research focus has shifted to explore the impact of social media on body image concerns, and shows that offline relationships are still important and in need of additional study,” Flynn said.
The study — like all research — includes some caveats.
“This was a cross-sectional survey, so the significant connections between variables were correlational and cannot demonstrate causality. The findings are in line with previous work that used self-discrepancy theory, but more work is needed to assess the directionality of influence,” Flynn explained.
“In addition, this study helped expand the use of self-discrepancy theory by introducing multiple types of discrepancies. Most research has assumed one actual-ideal discrepancy between individuals and media, for example. We assessed four different forms of this construct. Additional research is needed that applies this multi-dimensional perspective to self-discrepancy theory to learn more about the various types of actual-ideal discrepancies and their collective relationship to body image concerns.”
“This was a collaborative project that was born out of conversations with a colleague and co-author in psychology, Dr. Linda Lin, and a former student, Emily Cotchett. Emily completed a year-long research practicum with me based on her interest in media psychology, which served as the research perspective that helped narrow our collective interests in body image research,” Flynn added.
The study, “The relationship between men’s peer and social media muscularity ideal discrepancies and body satisfaction“, was authored by Mark Allen Flynn, Emily Cotchett, and Linda Lin.
(Image by Deep Khicher from Pixabay)
