A Researcher Tested Whether Exposure to Images of Very Thin

Essay

A researcher tested whether exposure to images of very thin fashion models causes young women to be dissatisfied with their own body,compared to exposure to athletic body images or neutral (non-body)images.She randomly assigned 120 women from an introductory psychology course to one of three exposure conditions: very thin female images,athletic female images,or neutral images (e.g.,household objects).Each condition had 10 images,projected individually on a large screen.The young women participated in small groups.Each image was displayed for 1 minute,for a total of 10 minutes of exposure.After viewing each image,participants wrote for 30 seconds a description of the image (the participants were led to believe their memory was being tested).After viewing the images,the women completed a questionnaire about satisfaction with their body.Negative scores indicate body dissatisfaction and positive scores indicate satisfaction with their body.The mean scores for each condition were as follows: Describe the independent variable in this study.