ArticleFrontiers in psychology2020
Muscles and the Media: A Natural Experiment Across Cultures in Men's Body Image.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 54 citations in OpenAlex.
- Influence of aesthetic beauty models on body image in indigenous communities in Latin America: a systematic review.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- High-risk influencing factors associated with physical inactivity and gender differences among Chinese university students in 2024.BMC public health · 2026Article
- From social media to body image distress: Problematic internet use, exercise addiction, and enhancement drugs use across countries.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2026Article
- Assessing associations amongst body dissatisfaction, eating disorder symptoms and sociocultural influences in adolescents from rural Nicaragua.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Sociocultural pressures and appearance ideal internalization: Their impact on body dissatisfaction in Brazilian adults.Preventive medicine reports · 2025Article
- Can Adults Accurately Judge Child Weight Status?Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Prevalence and Correlates of Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid Use in Australian Adolescents.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Death and beauty: mortality salience and creatureliness increase self-objectification not only in females but also in males.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Determining the relationship of food neophobia, digital addiction, body image perception on social media with dietary inflammatory index among adolescents.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Exploring risk factors of drive for muscularity and muscle dysmorphia in male adolescents from a resource-limited setting in Burkina Faso.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Innovative Reports on the Effects of Anabolic Androgenic Steroid Abuse-How to Lose Your Mind for the Love of Sport.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2023Article
- Tendencies Toward Supernormality/Subnormality in Generating Attractive and Unattractive Female and Male Avatars: Gender Differences.Archives of sexual behavior · 2023Article
- Psychometric properties of the Arabic versions of the Three-Item Short Form of the modified Weight Bias Internalization Scale (WBIS-3) and the Muscularity Bias Internalization Scale (MBIS).Journal of eating disorders · 2023Article
- Body image as a global mental health concern.Global mental health (Cambridge, England) · 2023Review
- Changes in the perceived size of the body following exposure to distorted self-body images.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Media pressure and the process of Westernization in the context of body self-assessment among young heterosexual and gay Polish men.PloS one · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
An increasing number of studies are evidencing relationships between the drive for muscularity and potentially harmful behavioral strategies, such as unhealthy dieting and steroid use amongst men in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) populations. As such Western appearance standards proliferate around the world via the media, men who live in other cultural contexts are also at risk of potentially negative effects from aspiring to the "muscular ideal." However, few studies have explored these relationships in non-WEIRD populations. We investigated men's body ideals and body image in two non-WEIRD, non-White populations, Uganda (Africa) and Nicaragua (Central America), and compared them with an ethnically diverse sample of men in the United Kingdom. We also examined whether socio-cultural factors including media and ethnicity, predicted the drive for muscularity and body change behaviors among our participants. Results showed that Ugandan men had the least desire for muscularity relative to men in the United Kingdom. Supporting the Tripartite model we found that media and peer influences significantly predicted the drive for muscularity, particularly among men from White British and Nicaraguan Miskitu ethnic groups. By contrast, Creole / Garifuna and Mestizo men from Nicaragua were more likely to want to increase muscularity relative to Black African men from Uganda. Overall, our findings support previous research in demonstrating that there are cultural differences in the kind of body men desire, and that men from WEIRD and non-WEIRD populations may experience similar pressures to aspire to and attain a muscular body type.
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Registered trials
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