Group-level consequences of communication about physical appearance

Recent research has looked at sociocultural standards and social comparison to explain body image disturbances (Thompson, 1996). This study uses Latane's Dynamic Social Impact Theory to explore the emergence of group level consequences of discussing these societal standards of physical appearance. It was hypothesized that there would be more clustering, consolidation, correlation and continued diversity amongst the participants opinions by the end of the five week discussion. These hypotheses were not supported by measures of clustering, consolidation, correlation and continued diversity. These results indicate that Dynamic Social Impact Theory alone may not be useful for studying the consequence of group discussion on changing beliefs about physical appearance. More research is needed to determine whether adding an educational component to the program would bolster the effectiveness of Dynamic Social Impact Theory in regard to understanding the process by which people's attitudes about their bodies are changed.