Women on Instagram refrain from looking at images that reflect their own feelings of insecurity, a new study released in Computers in Human Behavior has unveiled.
The study involved examining a number of female participants’ eye movements amid being tasked to view Instagram images containing the faces and bodies of other women.
The participants were tasked with viewing three rounds of images on Instagram of women who were underweight, average, and overweight.
The findings indicated that the participants focused more on the women’s bodies as opposed to their faces. Underweight and average women were preferred more than overweight women.
“Figures were fixated on more often and for longer than faces, which is believed to be related to the fact that torsos contain more weight-related cues than faces, suggesting female users are more interested in images of other women’s bodies, as these are more indicative of idealized “slimness,” wrote one of the study’s authors in a news release.
“The results demonstrated the inter-relationships between eye movement behavior and body shape, body part and body satisfaction.”
“Eye-tracking is increasingly used to investigate how social media users interact with platforms, and it has also been used to investigate how women view their own bodies, as well as the bodies of others, and the differences in these behaviors from healthy individuals, as well as those with lower body satisfaction and eating disorders.”
