Ethnicity and acculturation as moderators of the relationship between media exposure, awareness, and thin-ideal internalization in African American women

Abstract

The moderating effects of ethnicity and acculturation on three relationships: media exposure and awareness of sociocultural appearance norms, awareness of social ideals and thin-ideal internalization, and thin-ideal internalization and body dissatisfaction were examined. European American students and African American participants from both predominantly White and historically Black colleges and universities completed measures of media exposure, awareness of socicultural attitudes towards appearance, internalization of appearance norms, body dissatisfaction, and acculturation. The LISREL 8.5 program was used to perform structural modeling analysis using the Satorra-Bentler scaled chi-square and associated robust standard errors to test the relationship between ethnic groups. The results support previous findings regarding the mediational effect of internalization on the relationship between awareness and body dissatisfaction, and also provided evidence for the relationship between media exposure and awareness of sociocultural norms. The relationship between media exposure and awareness, and awareness and internalization were similar for both groups, while relationship between internalization and body dissatisfaction was stronger for European American women than for African American women. These results indicate ethnicity may serve to protect some women against the development of eating disorder symptoms, as well as the role of acculturation as a moderator between media exposure and awareness and between internalization and body dissatisfaction in African American women.