Consuming Thoughts

Smarter than she looks

Pamela Keel, Ph.D. — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 20:46:56 +0000

Rhodes scholar finalist, graduate from Stanford University with honors, Harvard Law School student, news anchor, author of 4 books, Executive Director of foundation for veterans . . . this list of accomplishments brings a certain image to mind, and that image is not a 20-something year old woman wearing a tiara and walking down a pageant runway with a bouquet of roses. Yet, these are only some of the accomplishments of Miss America winners beginning around 1989. What's my point? Pageant contestants have gotten a bad rap for being stupid because of weak responses during the question and answer period. Were the answers stupid? Sure. Does this mean that the contestants are stupid? Not necessarily.

A psychological study published over 10-years ago by Frederickson, Roberts, Noll, Quinn, and Twenge in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology demonstrated that having a female research participant try on a swimsuit decreased her performance on a math test by more than 25% compared to having her try on a sweater (i.e., if she would have gotten 100 questions on a 100-item test correct in a sweater, she got fewer than 75 of those questions correct in a swimsuit). Why? According to the authors, self-objectification (viewing ones body from an observers' perspective) interfered with women's mental performance by drawing attention away from the math test. Of interest, these results have been replicated by recent studies, suggesting that the finding was not a fluke but represents a real phenomenon.

If having a woman try on a swimsuit by herself in a dressing room leads to such a significant decrease in her cognitive performance, what hope does a pageant contestant stand of forming an intelligent answer in front of a panel of judges and an audience who are explicitly evaluating her on her physical appearance? Not much.

Of note, within the research study, participants' math performance was significantly correlated with their scores on a college entrance math test. So, generally speaking, smarter people will do better at forming a smarter answer under challenging circumstances. Thus, one may be able to validly conclude that a smarter answer reflects a smarter contestant. However, it would not be possible to conclude how smart (or stupid) a given contestant is in absolute terms because all of the contestants are smarter than they look.

Photos on Facebook

Pamela Keel, Ph.D. — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:33:35 +0000

Like a lot of people my age, I joined Facebook to reconnect with high school friends in anticipation of my 20th high school reunion. As part of the lead up to the reunion, classmates were asked to post high school pictures to a shared photo album. Revisiting the pictures was a LOT of fun (like a personalized version of VH1's "I Love the 80's" - particularly when you hit a streak of photos from an event you had pretty much forgotten). It's also been fascinating to read people's comments on photos, and I'm noticing a reliable pattern of gender differences in self-deprecating humor. The women routinely comment on their hair (big!), their jeans (acid washed), their sweaters (oversized), and their weight (fewer pounds than now). The men have posted tongue-in-cheek comments along the lines of, "It shall remain one of the enduring mysteries of human history how none of you ladies managed to land me. What a handsome [man] I am!" and "Man, I look good in pink!" and "Think I'm hot at 37? That's me at 17. You can look but you can't touch!"

I find the men's comments hysterically funny - particularly, when paired with their photos, and I wish that I felt the freedom to lavish false praise on a photo of myself without the fear that someone might think that I actually think I looked "hot." But I don't, and I wouldn't dare to make that kind of comment on a female friend's photo for fear that it would seem that I was encouraging people to laugh at her picture. And, apparently, I'm not alone - at least not among my female friends. So, instead we use self-deprecating humor - pointing out our past fashion faux pas or current higher weight. It's certainly relatable -eliciting a barrage of "me too's" or even "mine is worse." But it's not quite as much fun, and it strikes me as unfortunate that, for women, saying mean things about one's self is a way to be funny and nice, but for men, the reverse seems true. I think I may have humor envy.

Height and Weight of Playboy Centerfolds - Why Bother?

Pamela Keel, Ph.D. — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:58:46 +0000

In this month's Wired magazine, Katharine Gammon uses reported height and weight for Playboy centerfolds to examine how their Body Mass Index has changed over recent decades. (Body Mass Index or BMI is calculated by dividing weight in kilograms by the square of height in meters.) In contrast to the increasing BMI of US women age 20-29, Playboy centerfolds have gotten thinner from 1953 to 2009. While Gammon notes that the information may not be entirely accurate (and, indeed, the reported BMI for 1986's Miss December of 16.1 kg/m2 seems highly suspect), the author asserts that what matters is that the magazine thinks its readers want thinner centerfolds. She questions why Playboy has pursued (or portrayed) increasingly unrealistic ideals. This is a great question (and one that was raised by an article published in 1980 by Garner, Garfinkel, Schwartz, and Thompson in Psychological Reports). However, Gammon's article in Wired led me to a slightly different question, why does Playboy bother reporting height and weight information for centerfolds?

Precisely how is the information intended to be used? Picture a single man finding his ideal (play)mate in the pages of Playboy and deciding to pursue this ideal for a real life partner. Is he supposed to make note of her height and weight and then start scanning the immediate population and personal ads for someone with the same dimensions? That seems like an awful lot of work, and it seems doomed to fail. Even if very thin women with ample cup sizes were plentiful, how many women would disclose their height and weight to a complete stranger? Surely it would be easier for this same man to simply look at the picture and search for a woman who resembles the centerfold rather than bothering with information about her height and weight. I don't mean to imply that finding such a woman will be easy, just that having information about a centerfold's height and weight has no utility.

I suspect (and doubt I'm the first person to make this guess) that the information is there to create the illusion that the viewer knows something about the woman in the centerfold without actually giving any information that could interfere with the process of projecting a fantasy on to her. So, it would fall squarely into the category of uninformative information. Unfortunately, it becomes one more piece of data to confirm that women don't measure up to cultural ideals of desirability. Given the plethora of sources confirming that women don't measure up, I would like to propose that Playboy consider publishing some other equally useless information rather than adding insult to injury by reporting height and weight for their centerfolds. So, here are some items that could be included that would not actually provide any more information than is usually evident in the photo: eye color, hair length and color, number of visible birthmarks or tattoos. That's all I can think of for now (coming up with uninformative information is harder than I thought).

Idealizing vs. Identifying: Two Pathways to Public Appeal

Pamela Keel, Ph.D. — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:02:56 +0000

The media offers women several kinds of public figures. There are public figures we can idealize and who may represent aspirational goals, and there are public figures with whom we can identify and who reflect experiences of our own lives.

Both figures hold immense appeal, but the appeal is based on different qualities. Idealized individuals often combine professional success with personal beauty, including thin or athletic physiques. These individuals do not resemble us, and we hold them in high regard because they possess desirable qualities most of us don't. Olympic athletes, actors and actresses, and fashion models are examples of idealized public figures.

In contrast, ideal qualities are not required for public figures with whom we identify. In fact, appearing perfect can work against popular appeal because we identify with people when they remind us of ourselves. They share our struggles and look like us - even if they aren't actually like us (after all, most of us never obtain national or international recognition). Oprah Winfrey, radio talk show hosts, and successful politicians represent exemplars of this second group of public figures. They often provide inspiration because they have come from the ranks of everyday people, and their appeal is closely tied to their ability to connect with ordinary people.

At some level, the recent ads characterizing Barack Obama as a celebrity are an attempt to cast him as an idealized figure rather than a person with whom we can identify. Because we don't identify with those we idealize, we don't expect them to be able to identify with us. Thus, although we may adore our celebrities, we don't necessarily trust them to understand our daily struggles and develop effective plans to help us with problems they don't have.

So, what happens when a public figure with whom we identify starts taking on the characteristics of those we idealize? Could this be an effective Republican strategy for turning Barack Obama's immense appeal against him? And what does this mean for the Republican Vice-Presidential Nominee, Governor Sarah Palin? Her appeal to women in her party has been attributed in large part to the extent to which women identify with her. And, in fact, when you see her on stage, she does look like a real woman - with a real body. However, some of this may change in the months leading up to the November election. She may lose her pregnancy weight more quickly than the average woman given the demanding schedule of a presidential campaign and reports that she is working her way back up to her routine of running 7-10 miles a day. If this happens, will she retain her appeal as a public figure with whom the average woman can identify?

Some may wonder whether there is such a strong dichotomy in pathways to public appeal given the political success of previous celebrities such as Sonny Bono, Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Fred Thompson. All provide evidence that public figures don't have to choose between celebrity and public service, particularly in the Republican Party. However, they are all men, and, like many things, there may be a double-standard for women and men. It is notable that the ads portraying Barack Obama as a celebrity chose images of female celebrities - not male celebrities - and certainly not male celebrities who became successful politicians in the Republican Party. Or maybe I'm wrong, and there is no penalty to women's appeal as a relatable figure when they obtain an ideal figure.

The Biology of Blame, Part II

Pamela Keel, Ph.D. — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:29:17 +0000

In my first post for Psychology Today, Biology and Blame, I focused on efforts to promote awareness of biological contributions to eating disorders as an attempt to mitigate stigma associated with these illnesses. Although increasing understanding of genetic contributions to eating disorders may reduce the extent to which affected individuals are blamed for their illness, embracing biological explanations for group differences when groups are based on biological and social distinctions may contribute to biological reductionism and reduce pressure on society to address social contributions to disorders.

As a specific example, we know that eating disorders are more common in women than in men. We also know that we can understand differences between women and men in terms of sex (a biological distinction) or gender (a social distinction). Historically, biological explanations of "sex" differences have contributed to arguments against women seeking social equality with men and have been used to let society off the hook for differences in pay and professional attainment between men and women. In contrast, a social explanation of "gender" differences tends to support a vision in which men and women can be equal.

What does this mean for understanding differences between men and women and their risk for developing eating disorders? Should we reject biological explanations because these would reflect a kind of biological determinism that would leave us helpless to reduce women's risk for eating disorders? Should we pursue social explanations in order to maintain efforts to reduce social pressures directed at women to attain a dangerously thin ideal of beauty? How does this approach work with attempts to reduce stigma by increasing awareness of the role of biology in the development of eating disorders?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but I do know that there is research supporting the relevance of gonadal hormones (i.e., estrogens, progesterone, testosterone) in understanding the development of eating disorders. This research could contribute to our understanding of why eating disorders are more common in females. I also know that recognizing a biological contribution to sex differences does not mean that we have to accept that difference as immutable. The problem with biological determinism is not biology, it is the determinism. It is the assumption that biological factors are unchangeable (and the implicit assumption that social factors are easily changed). Any established factor will be difficult to change. However, it is impossible to change a factor if we allow ourselves to remain ignorant of its relevance.

Knowing Thyself

Pamela Keel, Ph.D. — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:36:36 +0000

With the opening of the Sex and the City movie today (May 30, 2008), I have been reflecting on my favorite episode of series - "The Real Me" (written and directed by Michael Patrick King who is also writer/director/producer of the film). In the opening scene, Carrie suggests that her friend Stanford approach a gorgeous man. Stanford rejects her suggestion because he feels he is not attractive enough, stating "I know what I look like." Carrie responds, "Then you can't see what I see." Shortly after, Carrie is invited to participate in a New York fashion show but resists the notion saying, "I'm not a model" to which Stanford responds, "Then you can't see what I see." This leads Carrie to question whether we can ever see ourselves as clearly as we see our friends. The question could be rephrased to whether we can ever see ourselves as others see us.

I suspect that the answer is "no." Our eyes are designed to take in the world around us, and their placement in our head makes it impossible to see our bodies at anything other than a skewed angle that no one else has. We can look at ourselves in mirrors, shop windows, photographs, and video recordings. However, these representations are limited. In real life, we have three dimensions, we don't stand perfectly still, and we are not the constant focus of others' attention. Plus, each person sees us differently anyway. Thus, unlike other aspects of ourselves for which we enjoy the inside track on self knowledge (how we feel, what we are thinking, names we do and do not recall, and the history and minutia of our daily lives), there is this significant domain in which others simply have a view that we cannot achieve. This creates an opportunity for insecurity, giving rise to questions like, "Do I look fat in these jeans?"

Because we cannot really see ourselves as others see us, we create a mental representation of what we think we look like to others - our body image, and this is where many women and more than a few men struggle. Yes - there are unrealistic ideals for beauty that only a very small proportion of real people can achieve. However, in addition to this, there is a fundamental inability to know where we fall in relation to these ideals. So, how do we improve body image? There has been a call to stop promoting an unhealthy, ultra-thin ideal of beauty, and this would definitely help. In addition, it might help to accept that no one, not even the most perfectly proportioned person in the world, can see herself as others see her. If we truly accept this, then perhaps we can relinquish the responsibility of trying to monitor how we look to others and focus instead on how we feel in our bodies.

Biology and Blame

Pamela Keel, Ph.D. — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:20:30 +0000

Over the last decade or more there has been increased attention to the contribution of genetic factors in eating disorders. Strong evidence supports a role for genes in risk for developing anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa – with genes accounting for as much risk in developing eating disorders as they do for schizophrenia. There has also been a belief that if researchers promote awareness of these findings, this would decrease stigma associated with eating disorders.

Recent studies have documented that individuals with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa are viewed as being more to blame for their condition than are individuals with schizophrenia. Further, the general public seems more aware of the role of biological factors in the development of schizophrenia compared to anorexia. Essentially, the argument has been that if everyone was more aware of genetic factors in the development of eating disorders, they would not blame patients for having eating disorders because people cannot control their genetic make-up. While the findings regarding genetic contributions are solid, and the potential benefit of increasing awareness of these results laudable, I wonder about the implicit assumption hidden in this approach.

Do we think that people are somehow more to blame for non-biological contributions to mental disorders? For example, one’s culture contributes to one’s risk for developing eating disorders. Are we saying that somehow an individual is more responsible for the culture in which she was born? What about gender? Is a girl to blame for being born female? Ultimately, questions regarding causes should be separated from questions concerning culpability because one has very little to do with the other.

I suspect that a specific challenge arises for eating disorders because an individual with anorexia nervosa deliberately refuses to eat enough food to sustain a healthy weight – thus, giving the impression that she could simply choose to start eating if she wanted. However, this represents a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the illness. An individual with anorexia nervosa may choose not to eat, but she never made the choice to have a disorder in which she would feel compelled to starve herself. Blaming her or anyone with an eating disorder is not supported by any data regarding causes of eating disorders, and it harms the very people who need help.