A randomized controlled trial investigating two protective filtering strategies to mitigate the effects of beauty-ideal media imagery on women’s body image

In this study, we investigated two protective filtering strategies and whether they could mitigate the effects of beauty-ideal media imagery (one particularly pervasive body-image ‘threat’) on women’s body image.

To do so, we randomized 150 women (Mage = 22.05) to complete an exercise familiarizing them with one of two protective filtering strategies (i.e., functionality appreciation or personality and values) or with a control topic. Afterward, the participants were exposed to a series of beauty-ideal media images and were prompted to continue to engage in their assigned strategies. Controlling for pretest levels of the respective variables, the repeated measures ANCOVAs showed that the two protective filtering groups reported a more positive body image (i.e., higher body appreciation, functionality appreciation, and appearance satisfaction), both after the familiarization exercise and after the beauty-ideal media exposure, compared to the control group.