Be Positive? The Interplay of Instagram Influencers’ Body Type and Favorable User Comments on Young Women’s Perceptions, Affective Well-Being, and Exercise Intentions

Just as traditional media such as television or magazines, social networking sites are filled with thin-ideal appearances—fostering unattainable beauty standards and detrimental social comparisons among users. In recent years, the so-called body positivity movement has strived to counteract these effects and to promote the beauty of many different body shapes. While initial research connects body-positive content to very promising results, much less is known about the role of other users’ social approval for the impact of the respective posts and messages. Thus, an online experiment (N = 156) is presented that exposes participants either to a classic thin-ideal or a plus-size influencer, while also manipulating visible peer feedback (positive vs. no comments). The findings show that the post of the body-positive influencer indeed exerts more beneficial effects on participants’ state affect than the thin-ideal content, but no significant differences emerge in terms of actual–ideal self-discrepancy, social comparison processes, or exercise intentions. However, intriguing interaction effects highlight the particular role of peer comments: Only if comments were absent, body-positive posts decreased actual–ideal self-discrepancy and increased exercise intentions. Offering an interpretation of these unexpected findings, the potential role of appearance-related comments as prompts of self-objectification is considered, as well as the promises of body neutrality (instead of body positivity).