Is Consumer Culture Bad for our Health? An experimental investigation of the impact of priming materialism on motives for exercise among young women
Project Lead: Beth Bell
Student as Researcher: Cassie Jade-Dunford
Western consumer culture frequently positions fitness/exercise as being more about appearance, status and an idealised lifestyle than health and nowhere are such messages more common than in social media – as witnessed in the growing popularity of content posted using #fitspiration. Within the context of self-determination theory, the shift from viewing fitness as intrinsic goals, to extrinsic goals could have implications.
Beth Bell wants to examine the messages surrounding fitness and how they influence attitudes towards fitness and other health behaviours. Cassie Jade-Dunford will be using Qualtrics, recruiting participants and running experiments independently, with the aim to produce a paper for the Journal of Health Psychology.