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Beauty
Over Death!
By Jeff Neu
Each year, millions of people go to tanning
salons to feel better about themselves, even though exposure to
ultraviolet radiation is the most common cause of skin cancer.
Two studies from the University of Missouri-Columbia found that
women expressed intentions to cease tanning only when they focused
their concerns on death. However, interest in tanning increased
when women were exposed to media images of tanned individuals.
“One answer to this question
is because self-esteem provides protection from deeply rooted
existential anxieties about death,” said Jamie Arndt, assistant
professor of psychology
at MU. Arndt, along with MU doctoral student Clay Routledge and
Jamie Goldenberg, assistant professor at the University of California-Davis,
conducted the studies. “There is a distinct difference in
a person’s behavior when their concern of mortality is in
or outside their conscious attention and when such factors as
societal standards and self-esteem are involved.”
The first study with 45 women found that
when women were consciously thinking about death they were more
likely to report wanting to purchase sunscreen products with a
high sun protection factor (SPF), However, when women were distracted
from thoughts of mortality they were more interested in products
with a lower SPF rating and a better tan.
In the second study, 75 women answered a survey on feelings of
mortality or another aversive topic, were distracted from those
thoughts, and then looked at visual images of a tanned woman on
a beach or a separate image of a beach ball. Arndt and his team
found that women who were distracted from thoughts of death and
exposed to the tanned woman image were more likely to purchase
tanning products, while the women who saw the beach ball image
were less likely.
Arndt believes this research can be the catalyst
for social and political movements directed towards undermining
mass media and marketing campaigns that associate certain physical
characteristics or harmful products with standards of self-worth.
“When society decides not to
celebrate the beauty of tanned skin, but instead focus on healthier
values such as protecting oneself from the harmful rays of the
sun, then we can help individuals defend themselves more productively
against the conscious and unconscious concerns about death,”
Arndt said.
Their combined studies, A Time to Tan:
Proximal and Distal Effects of Mortality Salience on Sun Exposure
Intentions, are scheduled for publication in an upcoming
issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The National
Cancer Institute funded the study.
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Last Update:
November 15, 2007
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