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Our study experimentally examined the effects of negative body talk on college students at a Historically Black University. Participants were randomly assigned to read a vignette that contained dialogue between friends while shopping. In the experimental condition, the dialogue contained negative body talk, while the control condition contained a neutral subject. After exposure to negative body talk, African American participants and White men showed greater self-reported eating pathology than those in the control group. Both men and women reported frequent engagement in negative body talk, although women reported more positive reasons for engaging in negative body talk than men did. Our study contributes to a small body of literature on negative body talk in ethnically diverse samples.
In the United States, the ideal appearance for both men and women is simply defined as young, fit, and thin (Becker, Diedrichs, Jankowski, & Werchan, 2013). Focus on the value of the idealized body is associated with habitual concern over one's appearance (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). One manifestation of such concern is "negative body talk," a general term encompassing discussion about one's physical appearance (Engeln, Sladek, & Waldron, 2013). Body talk which focuses on weight ("fat talk") is common, especially among White women, and may have both positive and negative consequences (Britton, Martz, Bazzini, Curtin, & LeaShomb, 2006). Although it has been less commonly studied, negative body talk has been identified in men (Engeln, et al, 2013) and may vary by ethnicity (Nichter, 2000). Our study experimentally examines the effects of negative body talk, specifically fat talk, on college men and women at a Historically Black University.
Both men and women frequently engage in negative body talk (Engeln, et al, 2013). Women tend to display fat talk as a type of negative body talk (Nichter, 2000). Fat talk typically follows a rigid script in which one woman makes a self-depreciating comment about her weight (e.g, "I look so fat in these jeans"). A second woman then denies that comment's truth, usually followed by making her own self-depreciating comment ("No, your butt's not big. Check out my muffin-top"). Among men, negative body talk also occurs, but tends to be less ritualized, less fat-focused, and more muscle-focused. Men also tend to make more positive comments about their bodies than...