Blog 2: Anti-Social Effects

It has long been known that media influences public opinion.  The Directs Effects model proposes that members of society are just passive viewers who absorb the media's message without discerning it.  However, Lazorsfeld's Limited Effects model claims that people are influenced by media as well as other things.  This theory was used in the article by Tiggemann and Polivy when they examined the role of thin models on the feelings of women.  The researchers showed 114 women pictures from popular magazines and asked them to report their reactions to the photographs.  Not surprisingly, the women gave negative reactions when they compared themselves to the women in the pictures.  I believe the main reason for this is not because the women in the study were simply shown pictures of thin models, but because they have been constantly bombarded with such images and, therefore, believe that those women constitute how "normal" women look.  Men are also exposed to the images as much as women are and are influenced by them.  This leads men to think that women should look a certain way in real life, which only reinforces the women's beliefs about their own inferiority, perpetuating a vicious cycle.

The article by Goodman discovered the same thing about women's beliefs about their bodies.  However, she noted at the end of her paper that women who were already thin reacted less dramatically to the ads than women who were significantly less thin.  Both articles support the Bandura Social Learning Theory, which purports that individuals learn behavior and attitudes from visuals.  No one in the pictures is telling the women that they're overweight and need to change their habits.  Contrarily, they are simply providing a visual standard that nonverbally and subconsciously affects the women's psyches.

We are all aware that many magazines, especially those targeted at women, use airbrushing in their photographs.  However, is it the responsibility of the media to warn individuals that their pictures may have negative effects, or is it on the individual to use common sense and discern unrealistic images?