The dark side of body positivity

Previous research has shown that body positive content, while having beneficial effects (increased body appreciation, increased positive mood, and so on), also increases state self-objectification in women. Since self-objectification limits the cognitive resources we can use to perform tasks, we seek to investigate: if body positive content increases self-objectification, can it have the same negative effects on our cognitive resources, as self-objectification does? We will be comparing the effects of body positive messages and non-body-related positive messages on cognitive and attentional performance. We expect that participants are more likely to have depleted cognitive resources and thus poorer performance when exposed to body positive content rather than non-body-related positive content and the control condition.Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofUnreviewedFacultyGraduateUndergraduat