PERCEIVED REALISM IN THE CULTIVATION PROCESS: USE OF LITTLE RED BOOK AND USERS’ PERCEIVED APPEARANCE INVESTMENT

Abstract

Along with the widespread use of social media today, there is an emerging line of research regarding social media effects on users’ body image. However, prior studies focused on users’ view of self-body and employed social comparison theory to explore the underlying mechanism that accounts for how social media influences one’s moods, feelings, perceptions, and attitudes towards their own body. Moreover, few of them have been conducted beyond Western contexts or concerned with an understudied body image construct—appearance investment. To expand the literature, this study applies cultivation theory to examine a rarely-studied mechanism in this line of literature and assess the potential moderating role of perceived realism. Moving beyond previous research foci, this study tests if frequent use of Little Red Book (LRB)—a popular appearance-focused social media in China—results in distorted perceptions of appearance investment (including behavioral investment and cognitive investment) in the general population, and if perceived realism of LRB content can reinforce this association. Media literacy is also tested for its potential to protect users from harmful social media effects. The results offer partial support for cultivation theory. While LRB use consistently and positively predicts one’s prevalence estimate of behavioral investment in society, it is not the case for that estimate of cognitive investment. Instead, perceived realism is the strongest, positive, independent predictor for the prevalence estimate of cognitive investment. The results found no support for either perceived realism or media literacy as an effective moderator. These findings suggest that it is still inconclusive whether cultivation theory is an appropriate framework that explains the social media effects on body image and in which condition it is applicable.