Belief in mind-body dualism and mental health: The case of body-image issues among social-media users.

Most young adults seem to have a troublesome relationship with their bodies. Exposure to social media is a reason. Indeed, young adults are bombarded with extreme comparison standards on platforms such as Instagram. This exposure is linked to rising body-image issues, dysfunctional eating and exercising behaviours, and associated mental-health distress. Adopting theory and methodology from social psychology and experimental philosophy, the current project examines the interplay between such comparison standards, the generation of ideal body-images, and body dissatisfaction. In doing so it will focus on how people construe the relationship between their selves and their bodies. Three studies will examine if belief in mind-body dualism amplifies both the effect of comparing to extreme body standards on ideal body-image generation and the effect of extreme body-images on body dissatisfaction and subsequent mental-health issues. I argue that dualism affords construing the body as a "vessel for the mind" and putting distance between the self and the body. This in turn allows participants to create more extreme counterfactual mental representations of their bodies--a process motivated by comparison on social media. A fourth study will clarify potential short-term benefits of dissociating the self from the body following dissatisfaction with the body. Triggered by a threat to the body, dissociating the self from the source of the threat might function as a short-term strategy to maintain self-esteem. Together, the proposed studies will increase our understanding of how a distant self-body relationship can both be a quick fix and a long-term problem for mental health.