David Campbell wrote: > What we need are large scale field experiments. These exist in the form > of marketing projects where several test cities receive exposure to test > ads while control cities do not. But rather than isolate psychological > variables for testing, intact ad/promotion packages are being assessed > and the dependent variables are generally limited to relevant sales data. >
Hi Y'all, The following was reported in the news several years ago. Has anyone seen the original research? Linda Linda M. Woolf, Ph.D. Webster University ************ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette June 2, 1999, Wednesday, SOONER EDITION HEADLINE: ANOREXIA IN PARADISE; TV TEACHES FIJI WOMEN TO LOATHE THEIR BODIES BYLINE: ELLEN GOODMAN DATELINE: BOSTON First of all, imagine a place women greet each other at the market with open arms, loving smiles and a cheerful exchange of ritual compliments: "You look wonderful! You've put on weight!" Does that sound like dialogue from Fat Fantasyland? Or a skit from fat-is-a-feminist-issue satire? Well, this Western fantasy was a South Pacific fact of life. In Fiji, before 1995, big was beautiful and bigger was more beautiful. People really did flatter each other with exclamations about weight gain. In this island paradise, food was not only love, it was a cultural imperative. Eating and overeating were rites of mutual hospitality. Everyone worried about losing weight - but not the way we do. "Going thin" was considered to be a sign of some social problem, a worrisome indication the person wasn't getting enough to eat. The Fijians were, to be sure, a bit obsessed with food; they prescribed herbs to stimulate the appetite. They were a reverse image of our culture. And that turns out to be the point. Something happened in 1995. A Western mirror was shoved into the face of the Fijians. Television came to the island. Suddenly the girls of rural coastal villages were watching the girls of "Melrose Place" and "Beverly Hills 90210," not to mention "Seinfeld" and "ER." Within 38 months, the number of teens at risk for eating disorders more than doubled to 29 percent. The number of high school girls who vomited for weight control went up five times to 15 percent. Worse yet, 74 percent of the Fiji teens in the study said they felt "too big or fat" at least some of the time and 62 percent said they had dieted in the past month. This before-and-after television portrait of a body image takeover was drawn by Anne Becker, an anthropologist and psychiatrist who directs research at the Harvard Eating Disorders Center. She presented her research at the American Psychiatric Association last week with all the usual caveats. No, you cannot prove a direct causal link between television and eating disorders. Heather Locklear doesn't cause anorexia. Nor does Tori Spelling cause bulimia. Fiji is not just a Fat Paradise Lost. It's an economy in transition from subsistence agriculture to tourism and its entry into the global economy has threatened many old values. Nevertheless, you don't get a much better lab experiment than this. In just 38 months, and with only one channel, a television-free culture that defined a fat person as robust has become a television culture that sees robust as, well, repulsive. "Going thin" is no longer a social disease but the perceived requirement for getting a good job, nice clothes, and fancy cars. As Becker says carefully, "The acute and constant bombardment of certain images in the media are apparently quite influential in how teens experience their bodies." Speaking of Fiji teens in a way that sounds all-too familiar, she adds, "We have a set of vulnerable teens consuming television. There's a huge disparity between what they see on TV and what they look like themselves- that goes not only to clothing, hairstyles and skin color but size of bodies." In short, the sum of Western culture, the big success story of our entertainment industry, is our ability to export insecurity: We can make any woman anywhere feel perfectly rotten about her shape. At this rate, we owe the islanders at least one year of the ample lawyer Camryn Manheim in "The Practice" for free. I'm not surprised by research showing that eating disorders are a cultural byproduct. But Hollywood hasn't been exactly eager to acknowledge the connection between image and illness. Over the past few weeks since the Columbine High massacre, we've broken through some denial about violence as a teaching tool. It's pretty clear that boys are literally learning how to hate and harm others. Maybe we ought to worry a little more about what girls learn: To hate and harm themselves. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
