Self-body recognition and attitudes towards body image in younger and older women

Abstract

Despite the fact that ageing causes dramatic changes in bodily appearance, little is known about how self-body recognition changes across life span. Here, we investigated whether older, compared to younger women, differed in the ability of recognising their own than other women's body parts and whether this effect was associated to negative body image dispositions. Twenty-eight young (M_age: 25.93 years, SD_age = 4.74) and 25 middle-aged (M_age: 54.36 years, SD_age = 4.54) women completed an implicit task consisting of visual matching of self and others' body parts and an explicit self-other body discrimination task. Stimuli comprised of images of body parts of the participant and of other age- and BMI-matched models, which were presented in the original size or modified to look rounder or thinner. Measures of adiposity (i.e. BMI), body image concerns and appearance-related worries for specific body parts and for the whole body were also collected. Whilst both groups showed a self-body advantage in the implicit, but not in the explicit task, the advantage was notably bigger for the younger group. However, the implicit self-advantage was higher in those middle-aged women that displayed more body image concerns and worries for specific body parts. Furthermore, the two groups were comparably less able in recognising their body parts when presented thinner as compared to rounder or in their actual size. Overall, these findings open the possibility that, as women age, their implicit self-recognition abilities may decline in association with more negative body image dispositions.

Keywords: Ageing; Body parts concerns; Body uneasiness; Implicit processing; Self-body knowledge.

Fig. 1

a Examples of body parts (stomach, hand, thighs and foot) taken for both the young and middle-aged women. Image represents both orientation of the body part, i.e. front and side view. b Schematic representation of the time-sequence and order of events for each trial of the implicit and explicit self-body recognition tasks

Fig. 2

Means (standard error of the mean) for accuracy of young and middle-aged groups for the implicit self-body recognition task. Accuracy was calculated based on a percentage score to determine participants’ ability to identify if the body part belonged to the same or different person. The results are displayed as a function of body parts’ identity (self vs. other). Asterisk (*) represents a significant mean difference

Fig. 3

A Combined scatterplot for the correlation between accuracy Δ index (self–other) and the scores obtained at the Global Severity index (GSI) subscale of the Body Uneasiness Test-B (BUT-A_GSI). B Combined scatterplot for the correlation between accuracy Δ index (self–other) and the scores obtained at the Positive Symptom Distress Index (PSDI) subscale of the Body Uneasiness Test-B (BUT-B_PSDI). Lines represent trendline. Dark grey circles represent the young women group and dark grey circles represent the middle-aged women group