(PS5-83) You can’t win, so win: How athletes and non-athletes respond to images of professional athletes

Abstract Text: Previous research by Daniels and associates (2021) has found that athletes’ presentation in the media impacts how the public views them. The current study examined how female, male, and gender expansive athletes and non-athletes responded to images of professional athletes. It was hypothesized that those who identified as athletes would experience more body dissatisfaction and disordered eating behaviors than those who did not identify as athletes. It was also hypothesized that athletes would experience more body dissatisfaction following viewing photos than non-athletes, and that women and gender expansive individuals would exhibit greater increases in body dissatisfaction than would men.

A sample of 222 participants (mAge = 33.38, SD = 11.70) recruited from a mid-Atlantic University (n = 39) or Connect by CloudResearch (n = 183) completed the study via SurveyMonkey. Participants were exposed to four images of professional athletes of their identified gender, with 95 women (42.8%), 61 men (27.5%), and 66 gender expansive individuals (29.7%). 66.2% were Caucasian, and 91.9% were not of Latinx origin. Participants completed demographic information, the Body Appreciation Scale-2 (Tylka & Wood-Barcalow, 2015), and the Teruel Orthorexia Scale (Teruel et al., Barrada & Roncero, 2018). Before exposure began, after viewing each of the pictures of professional athletes, and at the end of the study participants completed Visual Analogue Scales for weight, shape, and muscularity satisfaction (Slater et al., 2017).

Those who currently identified as athletes (n = 72) scored higher than non-athletes (n = 150) on body appreciation (mAthletes = 37.14, SD = 9.71, mNon = 32.73, SD = 9.71, t = 3.88, p < .001) and healthy orthorexia (mAthletes = 15.71, SD = 5.34, mNon = 12.19, SD = 5.93, t = 4.16, p < .001), but also on disordered orthorexia (mAthletes = 10.01, SD = 5.60, mNon = 7.08, SD = 5.37, t = 3.72, p < .001).

Dissatisfaction with weight for all participants followed a quadratic model for the 6 timepoints, with dissatisfaction beginning at the highest (m = 40.31, SE = 2.41), dipping down after viewing the first images, and coming back up at the end of the study after viewing all 4 images (m = 39.11, SE = 2.50), F = 7.63, p = .006). Those who did not identify as athletes had significantly more weight dissatisfaction than did current athletes (Mdiff = 16.43, F = 12.60, p < .001). In addition, women experienced significantly more weight dissatisfaction than did gender expansive individuals (Tukey HSD Mdiff = 17.36, SE = 5.28, p = .003), F = 5.91, p = .003; however, there was no difference with men.

Athletes scored higher on body appreciation and a focus on healthy eating, which in retrospect, is likely not surprising given efforts to provide athletes with science-based information about nutrition and optimizing what one’s body can do. However, athletes also showed higher levels of orthorexia nervosa, which should be closely monitored. Athletes were similarly less affected by viewing images of professional athletes. As hypothesized, women were more affected by viewing these images; however, surprisingly, they scored higher than gender expansive individuals and not men, indicating that images of athletes may affect those outside of the gender binary in ways yet to be explored.