Self-body recognition depends on implicit and explicit self-esteem

Body Image 9 (2012) 253–260

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Self-body recognition depends on implicit and explicit self-esteem Juliette Richetin ∗ , Annalisa Xaiz ∗ , Angelo Maravita, Marco Perugini Department of Psychology, University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

a r t i c l e

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a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 7 December 2010 Received in revised form 17 October 2011 Accepted 14 November 2011 Keywords: Self-body recognition Individual differences Implicit and explicit self-esteem

The present contribution bridges research on body image, self-esteem, and body recognition. Recent work in neuroscience indicates a superiority in the processing of self relative to others’ body parts. The present contribution shows that this ability is not universal but it is qualified by individual differences in implicit and explicit self-esteem. In fact, two studies (n1 = 41 and n2 = 35) using two different paradigms in body recognition and direct and indirect measures of self-esteem reveal that this advantage in recognizing one’s own body parts is associated with one’s level of self-esteem. Moreover, it appears that measures of implicit and explicit self-esteem provide different contributions to self-body recognition abilities and that these contributions depend on how self-body recognition is assessed. Implications of these results are discussed notably in the perspective of research on body image. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Starting from the assumption that physical self, body image, body recognition, and self-esteem are all parts of the self-concept, they should be linked to some extent. However, although research has examined explicit and implicit self-esteem (e.g., Zeigler-Hill & Jordan, 2010), body image (e.g., Cash & Pruzinsky, 2002), and body information processing such as self-body recognition (e.g., Devue et al., 2007) separately, the literature is scarce on the relations between all these four concepts. In order to fill this gap, this contribution aims at investigating the association between selfbody recognition ability and implicit and explicit self-esteem. In line with recent work revealing the role of self-esteem in self-face recognition (Ma & Han, 2010), we present two studies that test for the existence of a relation between self-esteem, measured implicitly and explicitly, and self-body recognition using two different paradigms. Implicit and Explicit Self-Esteem Traditionally, self-esteem refers to the evaluation of oneself (Rosenberg, 1965). In other words, self-esteem could be defined as “the evaluative aspect of self-knowledge that reflects how much people like themselves” (Zeigler-Hill & Jordan, 2010, p. 392). As the result of the development of dual-processing models that underline the importance of both automatic and deliberative processes (e.g.,

∗ Corresponding authors at: Department of Psychology, University of MilanBicocca, Piazza dell’Ateneo, 1 (U6), 20126 Milan, Italy. Tel.: +39 02 6448 3863. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Richetin), [email protected] (A. Xaiz). 1740-1445/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.bodyim.2011.11.002

Fazio, 1990; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Strack & Deutsch, 2004; Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000), there has been a relatively recent distinction between explicit and implicit self-esteem. On the one hand, explicit self-esteem would result from reflective self-evaluation, from deliberative analysis of information related to the self. It can be viewed as the judgment about themselves that people consider as valid. On the other hand, implicit selfesteem would result from automatic processing of experiences related to the self (Jordan, Whitfield, & Zeigler-Hill, 2007) and refers to a more spontaneous and non-reflective self-evaluation. It can be defined as “evaluations that are cognitively associated with the self and activated in response to self-relevant stimuli, but which are not necessarily endorsed as valid reflections of how one feels about oneself” (Zeigler-Hill & Jordan, 2010, p. 394). This theoretical distinction between associative and reflective processes has had some consequences for the assessment of self-esteem. In fact, whereas direct measures such as Rosenberg’s scale (1965) have been used to assess explicit self-esteem, some indirect measures needed to be developed to tap into implicit self-esteem. Note that the correlations between direct and indirect measures of self-esteem are usually weak, and vary across studies. In their meta-analysis on the correlations between implicit and explicit measures, Hoffman, Gawronski, Gschwendner, Le, and Schmitt (2005) reported a mean population correlation of .13 for these two measures of self-esteem. These weak and unstable relationships have been attributed to several factors such as the effect of self-presentation only on the direct measure (e.g., Greenwald & Farnham, 2000), two different systems underlying implicit and explicit self-esteem (e.g., Wilson et al., 2000), the capture of different aspects of self-evaluation (Zeigler-Hill & Jordan, 2010), or the differential accessibility of the attitude toward the self (Lebel, 2010).

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Among the measures of implicit self-esteem, the Implicit Association Test (IAT, Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) is certainly the most popular and the most commonly used. The IAT is a computerized task designed to measure the strength of association between two contrasted target categories (i.e., Me vs. Others) and two contrasted attribute categories (Positive vs. Negative). Although most of the applications of the IAT have concerned implicit attitudes (e.g., O’Brien, Hunter, Halberstadt, & Anderson, 2007; Richetin, Perugini, Prestwich, & O’Gorman, 2007), it has also been used to measure implicit self-esteem (Greenwald & Farnham, 2000). The basic principle of the Self-Esteem IAT is that people with a positive implicit self-esteem are faster and more accurate to categorize self-related words (e.g., me) and pleasant words (e.g., happy) when using the same response key than when using a different key. After having categorized stimuli from the two contrasted categories in a first phase and the stimuli from the two attribute categories in a second phase, participants are then asked to classify the stimuli in a combined categorization task whereby the stimuli of one target category are associated, via the classification task, to the stimuli of one attribute category. The difference in reaction times between the two versions of the combined categorization task (i.e., Me and Positive/Others and Negative vs. Me and Negative/Others and Positive) constitutes the IAT score. Akin to numerous studies that have demonstrated the capability of the IAT to predict different criteria in several domains (for a review see Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, & Banaji, 2009; Perugini, Richetin, & Zogmaister, 2010), implicit self-esteem has been shown to have predictive validity for behaviors such as the reaction to failure and success feedback (e.g., Greenwald & Farnham, 2000) or nonverbal indicators of anxiety (e.g., Spalding & Hardin, 1999).

Body Image and Self-Esteem Considering that the physical dimension is commonly considered as a fundamental component of the general self-concept (Epstein, 1973; Gillihan & Farah, 2005; James, 1890; Marsh, 1990), it should therefore be related to self-esteem to some extent. In other words, self-esteem relates to all aspects of the self-system such as the body self. For example, reviewing all the characteristics attributed to the self, Epstein (1973) noted that, as with other aspects of the self, the body self is part of the self-concept. For him, the development of the concept of body self starts with the child learning that his own body is one among all human bodies, and also that his body is uniquely his own. Moreover, this development of body self is linked to the image one has of his/her own body. Body image is a multidimensional construct that includes cognitive, behavioral, attitudinal, and emotional components (Cash & Pruzinsky, 2002), and many of these components are linked to selfesteem. For example, the evaluation of one’s appearance is part of body image but it is also an evaluation of oneself that is the definition of self-esteem. Perceptions of and concerns with body shape are dimensions of body image too and they are also related to self-esteem. Meijboom, Jansen, Kampman, and Schouten (1999) demonstrated that the accessibility of subliminally presented body shape and weight related words in restrained eaters was increased after a low self-esteem priming procedure consisting of retrieving the memory of an event in which the subjects had a feeling of failure. Moreover, individuals diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorders, characterized by an exaggerated concern with a slight or imagined “defect” in appearance, show lower implicit and explicit self-esteem with respect to both healthy people and subclinical populations (Buhlmann, Teachman, Gerbershagen, Kikul, & Rief, 2008; Buhlmann, Teachman, Naumann, Fehlinger, & Rief, 2009).

Body dissatisfaction is another aspect of body image as it usually refers to the negative evaluations of body size, shape, and weight (Grogan, 2008) and often implies a discrepancy between ideal and actual body images (Cash & Szymanski, 1995). Body dissatisfaction also appears to be linked to self-esteem, especially among women (e.g., Furnham, Badmin, & Sneade, 2002). Hoffmeister, Teige-Mocigemba, Blechert, Klauer, and Tuschen-Caffier (2010) recently investigated the influence of body exposure manipulation (i.e., standing in front of a mirror with the instructions to look at different body parts) on implicit self-esteem among restrained and unrestrained eaters. They demonstrated that the manipulation was effective for both groups, suggesting that the association between implicit self-esteem, body image, and shape/weight concern might not be limited to populations suffering from eating disorders but is likely to generalize to healthy people. All these results converged toward the fact that body image is closely linked to self-esteem (e.g., Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1999).

Body Image and Body Information Processing Consistent with the conception of a cognitive dimension of body image, research has shown that body image affects body information processing to some extent. Rosser, Moss, and Rumsey’s (2010) results suggest the presence of an association between appearanceorientated information processing biases and level of appearance concern. Moreover, patients suffering from anorexia nervosa (AN) show a systematic overestimation of one’s body shape and weight that is likely to involve not only affective components but also perceptual ones (see Rosen, 1990). For instance, individuals with eating disorders might have functional abnormalities in brain systems concerned with body image processing. Uher et al. (2005) found that parts of the distributed neural network that processes body image were underactive in women with eating disorders, especially AN. Such underactivity may underlie the failure to represent and evaluate one’s own body in a realistic way. Sachdev, Mondraty, Wen, and Gulliford’s (2008) neuroimaging study revealed that AN patients did not show the same pattern of activation as non-AN subjects when presented with pictures of their own bodies, while they showed no difference in processing non-self images. Overall, several works indicated that body processing disorders include deficits at both perceptual and emotional/attitudinal level (Cash & Deagle, 1997; Stice & Shaw, 2002). In the research area of body information processing, self-body recognition is one of the cognitive functions that was examined. Self-body recognition, that is the recognition of one’s own body, depends on both the representation of one’s own physical appearance and the ability to regard one’s own identity as separate from that of other individuals. As a consequence, it is commonly viewed as an index of self-awareness (e.g., Gallup, Anderson, & Platek, 2003). Since our face probably represents the most distinctive component of our identity, most works investigated the human ability of self-face recognition. The visual processing and the identification of self versus non-self body parts other than the face has been relatively neglected with few exceptions (Downing, Jiang, Shuman, & Kanwisher, 2001; Hodzic, Kaas, Muckli, Stirn, & Singer, 2009; Myers & Sowden, 2008). Nevertheless, recent evidence suggests that people are able to recognize self bodies and body parts more easily than those of others in terms of speed (Devue et al., 2007) and accuracy (Frassinetti et al., 2009; Frassinetti, Maini, Romualdi, Galante, & Avanzi, 2008). This self advantage is present for static as well as moving body parts and the recognition of self-body parts can be selectively impaired by brain damage of the right hemisphere, independently from the recognition of other people’s body parts and self-face (Frassinetti, Maini, Benassi, Avanzi, Cantagallo, & Farnè, 2010).

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Body Recognition, Body Image, and Self-Esteem Starting from the assumption that the self can be considered as a spatial entity, Robinson, Mitchell, Kirkeby, and Meier (2006) showed that lower levels of implicit self-esteem are associated with the tendency to internalize negative evaluations that in turn bias bodily symptoms perception. Moreover, AN patients seem to process information linked to their bodies differently from non AN patients (Sachdev et al., 2008) and AN patients are characterized by a distorted self-body perception and damaged self-esteem, therefore linking body image, self-esteem, and body recognition. Even more central to our concern, Ma and Han (2010) recently showed a link between self-recognition and self-esteem in a non-clinical sample. In particular, they used a self-concept threat paradigm that consists of performing a task in which the self was associated with positive and negative words. Compared to those who did not, participants who did perform the task showed weaker implicit positive association with the self as gauged by a Self-Esteem IAT in which pictures of participants’ face and friends’ faces were associated with positive and negative words. Moreover, the same manipulation leads to a smaller self-advantage in an implicit face-recognition task consisting of discriminating head orientations of self versus familiar faces with a greater decrease of self-face advantage for those who assigned more negative traits to the self. Ma and Han (2010) concluded that self-face recognition is partially determined by implicit selfesteem. In terms of the more specific relationship between self-esteem, self-body recognition, and body image, the literature is scarce on this topic. No work has been devoted to examine it in a systematic way. However, an example might be helpful to illustrate the important link between the three concepts. Take for instance the cases of Jenny who has low self-esteem and Sarah who has high self-esteem. Considering the link between self-esteem and body image, Jenny is more likely to have a more negative body image than Sarah has. Compared to Sarah, Jenny is therefore more likely to develop coping strategies such as staying away from mirrors to avoid distressing body image experiences. As a consequence of repetition of this type of coping behaviors, Jenny is less likely to be visually confronted to her own body parts and thus less likely to accurately recognize her own body than Sarah is. In short, one could argue that a person who has low self-esteem would be less able to recognize his/her own body than someone who has a high self-esteem.

Aim of the Contribution A growing amount of research recently pointed out that body image, body recognition, and self-esteem are highly connected concepts and not only in clinical conditions. In this context, the first aim of this contribution was to investigate the relations between the self-body recognition ability and implicit and explicit self-esteem. Although implicit self-esteem has been shown to play a role in face recognition (Ma & Han, 2010), to our knowledge no studies so far have examined the relations between both implicit and explicit self-esteem and self-body recognition. We tested for the existence of an association between the recognition of self body-parts (i.e., hands and feet) and one’s own implicit and explicit self-esteem. Second, we aimed at examining the extent to which the type of paradigm used to gauge selfbody recognition plays a role in its relation to implicit and explicit self-esteem. We therefore investigated the relation between selfesteem and covert versus overt body recognition as measures of self-recognition.

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Study 1: Covert Body Recognition Study This study consists of testing for a contribution of implicit and explicit measures of self-esteem to the ability to recognize one’s own body parts. Frassinetti’s (e.g., Frassinetti et al., 2008) matchingto-sample paradigm was used for covertly measuring self-body recognition because previous studies successfully demonstrated its ability to assess self-body recognition. Method Participants and procedure. Forty-four Italian participants (21 women, 23 men; M age = 23.43, SD = 2.58) individually took part in the study after they gave their informed consent. The study was approved by the university’s ethical committee. First, pictures of the participant were taken. A few minutes later, the participant completed in the following fixed order a Self-Esteem IAT, a measure of explicit self-esteem, and finally a covert body recognition task. All measures were administered via computer (Inquisit). The data of three participants were removed because of a high percentage of errors in the IAT (greater than 25%) leaving a total of 41. Materials Self-Esteem IAT. In the IAT (Greenwald et al., 1998) participants were instructed to classify words that were presented individually and in a random order in the middle of the screen using two keys (i.e., ‘E’ and ‘I’). The target concept was Me and its contrast was Others, whereas the attribute categories were Positive and Negative. For each category, five stimuli were used (see Appendix A for the full list of stimuli). The task was divided in 5 blocks of classification: (Me vs. Others Practice Block; Positive vs. Negative Practice Block; Me + Positive vs. Others + Negative Compatible Critical Block; Others vs. Me Practice Block; Others + Positive vs. Me + Negative Incompatible Critical Block). The order of the compatible and incompatible association was kept fixed for all participants, with the combination Me and Positive being presented first. This fixed block order is preferable when the interest is primarily in examining the correlations between the IAT and other measures or criteria (cf. Egloff & Schmukle, 2002; Perugini et al., 2010). All practice blocks consisted of 20 trials and each critical block consisted of 81 trials (including one initial dummy trial so 80 trials in each critical block). Each trial was separated by pre- and post-trial pauses of 250 ms each and the category labels stayed on the top part of the screen. There was no built-in penalty in the procedure implying the participant was not required to give the correct answer to proceed to the next trial. Only a red X appeared in the middle of the screen for 200 ms if the participant did not answer correctly. A D score was calculated by considering all 80 trials, taking the difference in reaction time between phases three and five and transforming it (D algorithm with 600 ms penalty for errors as a consequence of not taking them into account directly in the procedure, Greenwald, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003). Higher scores thus indicated a stronger automatic positive association with the self. The reliability of the IAT was good (˛ = .84). Explicit self-esteem. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (1965) consisted of 10 items (e.g., “I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others”). Participants indicated the extent to which they agree with each statement on a 4-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). A single score was calculated by aggregating the scores for each item (after appropriate recoding of reversed items) with a positive score reflecting a positive explicit self-esteem (˛ = .84).

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Covert body recognition task. The task has been built following Frassinetti et al.’s (2008) paradigm that consists of a matching-to-sample task in which non clinical individuals have been shown to produce more correct responses in matching stimuli when the target stimulus depicted one’s own body parts compared to other people’s body parts. Participants were simultaneously presented with three images, vertically aligned on the centre of the computer screen and were required to decide which of the upper or the lower one matched the central target stimulus using two keys (i.e., “7” and “N”). Stimuli represented grey scale pictures of other people’s or the subject’s own body parts (hand and foot), matched for gender, age and skin color. The pictures were taken with a digital camera a few minutes before the proper task and were presented on a uniform white background.1 The target stimulus was presented upright, in a black frame, at the center of the screen. To minimize an automatic match between stimuli, the upper and the lower stimuli were 30◦ tilted to the left or to the right with respect to the central template. The stimuli stayed on the screen until the participants responded. The task consisted of 96 trials with 24 trials with the subject’s own body parts as target stimulus and 72 trials with unknown people’s body parts as target stimulus. Response accuracy (i.e., choice of the upper vs. lower stimulus matching the central stimulus) was recorded. We considered three different scores. First, we considered the arc-sine transformed frequency of correct responses for self and others target stimulus, respectively. For clarity, the reported means are the raw frequencies (results were similar when considering raw scores). High scores reflect good ability to recognize one’s own body parts and others’ body parts, respectively. A third score was the difference between self and others with positive score reflecting better ability to recognize one’s own body parts than others’ body parts. Results Main effect self/others. A t-test for paired samples was performed on the frequency of correct responses depending on the target (i.e., self vs. others). There was a significant effect of the type of target on the frequency of correct responses, t(40) = −4.28, p < .001, 2 = .31. Participants produced more correct responses in matching stimuli when the target stimulus depicted one’s own body parts (M = .92, SD = .07) compared to other people’s body parts (M = .86, SD = .08). Gender effects. We did not have any specific hypothesis considering the role of gender in self-body recognition. However the literature, especially on body image, provides mixed evidence on differences between men and women depending on the dimension of body image one considers. We therefore examined the potential role of gender in self-body recognition. There was no gender effect on the frequency of correct responses in the Covert Body Recognition Task (all ps > .173), and there were no moderation effects of gender on the correlations between the IAT and the indexes of body recognition (all ps for interaction terms > .346). Correlations. The Self-Esteem IAT was correlated (see Table 1) with the frequency of correct responses for self targets. The explicit

self-esteem was also correlated with the frequency of correct responses for self targets. Finally, implicit and explicit self-esteem were significantly and positively correlated. Independent contributions. For a test of independent contributions of both self-esteems in self-body recognition, both measures were entered in a regression with the frequency of correct responses to self targets as the dependent variable. The full model explained 22% of variance. The contribution of Self-Esteem IAT was not significant (ˇ = .24, p = .124) and the explicit self-esteem was significant (ˇ = .33, p = .034). Therefore in terms of independent contributions, only the explicit measure of self-esteem showed a significant contribution. Discussion The results from this first study corroborate the self advantage in body recognition obtained in previous research (e.g., Frassinetti et al., 2008, 2010). The results also suggest the ability of the IAT to significantly contribute to variance accounted for in the recognition of self-body parts. However, only the explicit measure of self-esteem showed a significant independent contribution. The positive correlation between explicit and implicit measures of self-esteem might partially explain why the implicit measure of self-esteem does not simultaneously relate to self-body recognition. Overall, the results of this first study thus illustrate that self-esteem qualifies the ability to recognize one’s own body parts as assessed with the present matching-to-sample paradigm, which constitutes a valuable method to test self-body recognition. However, in Frassinetti’s paradigm, participants are never asked directly to recognize their self-body parts. One could thus reasonably wonder whether both measures of self-esteem would be associated to self-body recognition to the same extent if participants were asked overtly to recognize their own body parts, that is if instructions directly focused their attention on body ownership. Study 2: Overt Body Recognition Study This second study aims at replicating the results obtained in Study 1 by testing the relation between implicit and explicit selfesteem and the recognition of self body parts using a more overt measure than Frassinetti’s paradigm (Frassinetti et al., 2008). Method Participants and procedure. Thirty-seven Italian participants (12 women, 25 men; M age = 26.46, SD = 3.23) took part in the study after they gave their informed consent. The study was approved by the university’s ethical committee. First, pictures were taken. With the exception of three participants for whom pictures and measures were taken the same day, participants were requested to return after 3–4 days and completed a Self-Esteem IAT, the Rosenberg (1965) Self-Esteem scale and an overt body recognition task. All measures were administered via computer (Inquisit). The data of two participants were discarded because of a rate of errors over 25% in the implicit task leaving a total of 35. Materials

1 For both Covert and Overt Body Recognition Tasks, the stimuli were grey-scale pictures taken with a digital camera Fuji Fine Pix A820 and presented on a uniform white background. Six flash photographs of participants’ and models’ right hand and left foot (in an upright posture and rotated of 30◦ on the right and on the left following a grid) were taken from 50 cm vertically above, in an environment with constant illumination settings. Pictures were then post-processed using Adobe Photoshop software in order to equalize the length in pixels (450) of the stimuli across participants (but maintaining proportions) and to prevent any low-level dissimilarities, such as contrast and brightness.

Self-Esteem IAT. The IAT was identical to the one used in the first study. The same procedure was used to calculate a D score (˛ = .91). Explicit self-esteem. Participants indicated the extent to which they agree with each of the 10 statements of the Rosenberg (1965) Self-Esteem scale on a 6-point scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to

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257

Table 1 Means, standard deviations, and correlations for Study 1.

1. IAT Self-Esteem 2. Explicit self-esteem 3. Correct responses for Others targets 4. Correct responses for Self targets 5. Correct responses for Others/Self

M

SD

1

2

3

4

.79 3.67 .86 .92 .06

.37 .52 .08 .07 .09

.33* .06 .35* .15

.21 .41** .16

.28 −.68**

.44**

Note. N = 41. * p < .05. ** p < .01.

6 (strongly agree). The reliability of the explicit self-esteem score was good (˛ = .80).

Table 2). Moreover, implicit and explicit self-esteem were not correlated.

Overt body recognition task. In the overt body recognition task, participants were instructed to classify black and white pictures of body parts that were presented individually in a random order, according to whether the body part belonged to their body or to someone else’s body, using two keys. The task consisted of 24 trials (6 trials with participant’s hand and foot presented straight, 30◦ tilted to the left and to the right, and 18 trials with unknown people’s hand and foot presented with the same different angles). Pictures were matched for gender, age and skin color. Each trial was separated by pre- and post-trial pauses of 250 ms each and the category labels stayed on the top part of the screen. The stimulus stayed on the screen until the participant responded. Four indexes were considered: the arc-sine transformed frequency of correct responses for self and others targets, the difference between self and others for the Overt Body Recognition task, and a d score consisting in subtracting the proportion of false alarms (i.e., identifying a body part as one’s own whereas it is not) to the proportion of hits (correctly identifying a body part as one’s own).2 A positive d score indicated high recognition of one’s own body.

Independent contributions. When considering simultaneously both measures of self-esteem for the prediction of the frequency of correct responses for self targets, the full model explained 15.8% of variance. The Self-Esteem IAT showed a significant contribution (ˇ = .37, p = .031) whereas the explicit self-esteem did not (ˇ = −.12, p = .447). For the d score, the full model explained 17% of variance. The Self-Esteem IAT again significantly contributed (ˇ = .39, p = .021) whereas the explicit self-esteem did not (ˇ = −.09, p = .575).

Results Main effect self/others. There was no significant effect of the type of target on the frequency of correct responses, t(34) = 0.50, p = .620, 2 = .01. Participants produced a comparable number of correct responses when faced to their own body parts (M = .73, SD = .29) and to others’ body parts (M = .82, SD = .13). Gender effects. There were significant gender effects on the frequency of correct answers in the Overt Body Recognition Task for self targets with more correct responses among men (M = .80, SD = .24) than among women (M = .58, SD = .33), F(1,33) = 4.59, p = .04, 2 = .12; and on the difference of correct responses between self and others targets with bigger differences among women (M = −.27, SD = .30) than among men (M = .01, SD = .30), F(1,33) = 7.09, p = .012, 2 = .18. Moreover and more central to our concerns, there were no moderation effects of gender on the association between the measures of implicit or explicit self-esteem and the performance in the Overt Body Recognition Task (all ps for interaction terms > .362). Correlations. The frequency of correct responses for self targets, the difference in the frequency of correct responses between self and others targets, and the d score were correlated with the Self-Esteem IAT but not with the explicit self-esteem measure(see

2 Calculation of d prime (d ) proceeded according to the approach defined by Green and Swets (1966) with corrections for empty cells (i.e., no false alarms or misses) as recommended by Banaji and Greenwald (1995).

Discussion This second study aims at confirming the relation between implicit and explicit self-esteem and the recognition of self body parts obtained in Study 1 using a paradigm in which participants were asked more overtly to recognize their own body parts. The results are manifold. First, the self advantage that was demonstrated with the Frassinetti’s paradigm did not occur with this new paradigm. There were also gender effects on self-body recognition abilities but those could be partially due to the fact that there were twice as many men than women and therefore might be artificially inflated. More central to our concerns, once again self-esteem relates to self-body recognition abilities. However, unlike what was observed in Study 1, these abilities were not correlated with the explicit self-esteem measure and implicit and explicit measures of self-esteem were not correlated. Finally, unlike what happened in Study 1, Self-Esteem IAT relates to self-body recognition over and above the explicit measure of self-esteem. General Discussion The first aim of this research was to better understand one of the largely unexplored mechanisms involved in self-body recognition, that is to say the role of individual differences in self-esteem. The results of two studies showed that self-esteem is in fact correlated with the ability to recognize one’s own body parts. As it has been recently demonstrated for face recognition (Ma & Han, 2010), the fact that self-esteem relates to self-body recognition echoes research results suggesting that self-body parts processing is closely linked to the construction of the bodily self (e.g., Sugiura et al., 2006). Moreover, this research provides support to previous work that showed that the association between self-esteem and body image (e.g., Hoffmeister et al., 2010) does also occur in non clinical populations. The second aim of these studies was to examine two different tasks (i.e., covert vs. overt body recognition) as measures of selfbody recognition. It appears that the self advantage demonstrated in the covert body recognition task in the present and previous works (e.g., Frassinetti et al., 2008) does not occur when recognition is more overt. Moreover, when the task consists of a matchingto-sample paradigm (i.e., covert self-body recognition task), the

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Table 2 Means, standard deviations, and correlations for Study 2.

1. IAT Self-Esteem 2. Explicit self-esteem 3. Correct responses for Others targets 4. Correct responses for Self targets 5. Correct responses for Self/Others 6. d

M

SD

1

2

3

4

5

.90 4.53 .82 .73 −.09 1.72

.44 .74 .13 .29 .32 1.03

−.09 .10 .38* .35* .40*

.07 −.16 −.20 −.13

−.10 −.41* .49**

.91** .79**

.58**

Note. N = 35. * p < .05. ** p < .01.

measure of explicit self-esteem was correlated with the ability in self-body parts recognition over and above the Self-Esteem IAT. The opposite pattern was obtained when self-body recognition was more overt. This discrepancy in the pattern of results echoes research showing that explicit and implicit self-esteem measures predict different behaviors (see Spalding & Hardin, 1999). This discrepancy also suggests that future research should investigate body recognition using different paradigms and examine its association with self-esteem in order to better understand the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon. For example, considering that Frassinetti’s paradigm is mostly used for brain-damaged patients, one could modify and make it more difficult for healthy individuals by implementing a response-window. However, note that in the first study, implicit and explicit self-esteem measures were significantly correlated, therefore indicating a certain degree of multicollinearity between them. This multicollinearity might partially explain why the implicit measure does not simultaneously relate to self-body recognition together with the explicit measure. In the second study, there is a lower degree of multicollinearity demonstrated by a lack of correlation between the two measures of self-esteem that could explain the significant correlation between the implicit measure and self-body recognition over and above the explicit measure of self-esteem. It is important to note that the inconsistency between measures of implicit and explicit self-esteem is not uncommon in the literature (e.g., for a review, Jordan, Logel, Spencer, Zanna, & Whitfield, 2008; Zeigler-Hill & Jordan, 2010). This inconsistency has been considered to be evidence of the distinct existence of implicit and explicit self-esteem (e.g., Greenwald & Farnham, 2000; Rudolph, Schröder-Abé, Schütz, Gregg, & Sedikides, 2008) but also to be the result of the conditions under which measures have been taken (e.g., Lebel, 2010; Pelham, Koole, Hardin, Hetts, Seah, & DeHart, 2005). For example, individual differences in self-attitude accessibility have been recently found to moderate the relation between explicit and implicit self-esteem (Lebel, 2010). In this regard it is worth noticing that in the second study the pictures were taken within a distance of 3–4 days from the task (with the exception of 3 participants), while in the first study the procedure consisted of taking the participants’ pictures and of making them wait around 20 min while the experimenter was formatting the pictures for the body recognition task. This might have increased self-awareness: an experimenter had just taken pictures of them and they were waiting to take part in a psychology study. In line with recent literature (Lebel, 2010), one could therefore speculate that the significant correlation between the two measures of self-esteem in Study 1 might have been at least partially the result of an high level of selfawareness. Besides the possibility of method effects, the different gender composition of the samples in Study 1 and Study 2 must be mentioned, since a greater explicit-implicit self-esteem correspondence was found in women than men (Pelham et al., 2005). In fact, whereas the number of men and women was similar in Study 1, there were 25 men and only 12 women in Study 2. In sum, the difference in the correlation between measures of implicit

and explicit self-esteem in first and second study might be due to methodological factors. The present contribution reveals that body recognition, similarly to face recognition, is significantly related to one’s own self-esteem rather than being an equally shared ability among people. Moreover, as body evaluation has been shown in some cases to be closely linked to self-esteem, our research demonstrates that one of the cognitive functions involved in body perception that is self-body recognition also relates to self-esteem, and not only when considering clinical samples. This contribution thus constitutes a first step in the investigation of the specific relationships between body image, body recognition, and self-esteem. Further research should be devoted to better understanding the processes underlying these relationships. For example, let us come back to the cases of Jenny and Sarah we mentioned in the introduction. If Jenny developed coping strategies over time such as staying away from mirrors to avoid distressing body image experiences, Jenny is less frequently exposed to her own body parts, and thus less familiar with her body parts and finally less likely than Sarah to accurately recognize her own body. Based on this reasoning, one could hypothesize that familiarity plays a role in self-body recognition. It might be a mediator of the link between body image and the ability to recognize one’s own body parts. In our first study, we wanted to reproduce the original work of Frassinetti et al. (2008) and therefore it prevented us for example to use familiar others’ body parts as stimuli. In the second study we wanted to use a similar material in order to compare the results of the two studies. A good way to investigate the relation between self-esteem, familiarity with body parts, and body recognition would be through the experimental manipulation of the familiarity which participants have with the body-parts used in the self-body recognition task in a study similar to the ones described in this contribution. A correlational study in which one would measure different dimensions of body image such as the adoption of coping strategies to avoid distressing body image experiences (e.g., mirrors avoidance), the familiarity with body-parts used in a selfbody recognition task, and the performance in the same self-body recognition task could also be a way of deepening the investigation of the links between the different concepts. Such future research could shed more light on the relationship between body image, self-esteem, and body recognition. Moreover, if body recognition is shown to be strongly associated to the adoption of coping strategies such as mirrors avoidance, then self-body recognition might be considered a cognitive indicator in the assessment of body image. The association between self-esteem and self-body recognition ability obtained in these two studies is even more valuable considering that measures of global self-esteem were used, and that the self-body recognition tasks included “neutral” body parts such as hands and feet. One may suggest that the role of implicit and explicit self-esteem is even greater in self-body recognition when considering “critical” body parts such as hips or thighs that are usually linked to body concern and dissatisfaction. Moreover, considering specific body-related forms of self-esteem in future studies

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may deepen our understanding of the phenomenon. In the same perspective of improving knowledge on the processes underlying the relationships between body image, body recognition, and selfesteem, future research should investigate the causal relationship between self-esteem and self-body recognition by momentarily manipulating self-esteem, for example (e.g., Ma & Han, 2010). To conclude, by showing that self-esteem relates to self-body recognition, this contribution supports the general hypothesis that individual differences play a role in cognitive functions. Moreover, it suggests that self-body recognition could constitute an additional cognitive indicator in the assessment of body image. Appendix A.

Stimuli used in the Implicit Association Test (Italian and English equivalent). Me Target Category (Io) me, mine, I, myself, my (io, mio, me, mia, miei) Positive Attribute Category (Positivo) positive, joy, happy, paradise, nice (positivo, gioia, contento, paradiso, bello)

Others Contrast Category (Altri) others, they, their, she, he (altri, altre, loro, esse, essi) Negative Attribute Category (Negativo) negative, hell, ugly, sad, pain (negativo, inferno, brutto, triste, dolore)

Note: Some English and Italian stimuli for Self and Others are conceptually equivalent but not literally translated because they would not be appropriate as stimuli given the peculiarities of the Italian language.

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