What’s not to like? Enhancing Women’s Body Satisfaction by means of an Evaluative Conditioning Procedure with Positive Social Media Feedback.

Because of its serious consequences for individuals’ mental health, there is an urgent need to improve current body image interventions. Recent studies using evaluative conditioning to strengthen the association between women’s body and positive (social) stimuli have shown promising results.

In two experimental studies, we tested whether incorporating more age appropriate positive social stimuli as unconditioned stimuli (USs) can strengthen the conditioning procedure as a means to enhance women’s body satisfaction. In the experimental condition, participants’ body pictures were systematically followed by the Facebook like-button and youthful smiling faces (study 1, experimental condition: n = 68; control condition: n = 67) or positive Emojis (study 2, experimental condition: n = 64; control condition: n = 67).