To Diet or Not to Diet? The Role of Exercise Self-Efficacy in Fitspiration Exposure: A Pretest: An Abstract

The fitspiration trend, which is supposed to help achieve fitness goals, has been found to influence individuals’ perception of the ideal body shape and size (Ho et al. 2016), and to increase body dissatisfaction rates (Tiggemann and Zaccardo 2015). This pre-test looked into models that will be used for our main study, which will evaluate the role of other factors that may affect the relationship between fitspiration exposure and body dissatisfaction, such as emotions, exercise self-efficacy, and self-improvement motivation. This study will also compare differences in body dissatisfaction rates between exposure to fitspiration vs the thin-ideal in Instagram posts.

Specifically, fitspiration has also been found to influence maladaptive behaviors including obsessive-compulsive exercising, engagement in excessive and rigid fad diets (Ratwatte and Mattacola 2019), and an increase in body dissatisfaction (Ho et al. 2018), all known precursors of eating disorders. However, Heinberg and colleagues (2016) argue that some degree of body dissatisfaction may motivate engagement in healthy behaviors such as exercising and healthy dieting. Similarly, Moffitt and others (2018) found self-compassion reduces body dissatisfaction and influences self-improvement motivation. In thinking about the role of emotions, appraisal theory (see Roseman 1991) argues emotions are responses to how an individual perceives and interprets any situation corresponding to the relevance it has on their personal goals. However, Pounders and colleagues (2018) found emotions play a significant role in message acceptance, along with self-efficacy.

With this in mind, we propose that by manipulating emotions (hope, guilt, and pride) in the fitspiration messages on Instagram captions, the effects of exposure body dissatisfaction may differ. We also argue these differences may depend on whether the exposure is to the thin-ideal or to the fitness ideal. As such, in this pre-test we exposed 94 students to different fitness levels models for a manipulation check, and after performing a between subject analyses, selected the models that will be used to test our hypotheses in the main study.