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The present research aimed to investigate whether retraining thin-beautiful associations could modify implicit beliefs relating thinness to beauty, increase me-beauty associations, and decrease explicit body anxiety in young women. In Experiment 1 (N = 180 women), participants were repeatedly exposed to beauty-related words paired with thin-related or large-related words on 50% (control) versus 75% (retraining) of trials. Implicit belief was assessed with a Relational Responding Task. In Experiment 2 (N = 195 women), me-beauty associations were assessed with a single-category Implicit Association Task, and body anxiety with a self-report measure. The implicit association measure remained unaffected by the retraining task. However, after retraining, women displayed weaker thin-is-beautiful implicit belief, Cohen’s d = 0.44, CI95[0.14, 0.74], and less body anxiety, Cohen’s d = 0.34, CI95[0.06, 0.63] than in the control condition. These results suggest that retraining thin-beautiful associations could reduce thin-is-beautiful implicit beliefs and decrease explicit body anxiety among women. Keywords: thin ideal, implicit beliefs, appearance anxiety, retraining, semantic associations How to Cite: Selimbegovic, L., Collange, J., Bocage-Barthélémy, Y., & Chatard, A. (2021). ‘Large Is Beautiful!’ Associative Retraining Changes Implicit Beliefs About Thinness and Beauty and Decreases Women’s Appearance Anxiety. International Review of Social Psychology, 34(1), 5. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.442 Handling Editor: Aïna Chalabaev Université Grenoble Alpes, FR Contact: iD X close 616 Views 174 Downloads 1 Twitter   Published on 17 Feb 2021 Peer Reviewed  CC BY 4.0  Accepted on 19 Jan 2021            Submitted on 05 May 2020 Many women believe that they must be thin to be beautiful (Grogan, 2006). In comparison to men, women more heavily invest in and have more negative body image (Davis et al., 2020; Muth & Cash, 1997; Quittkat et al., 2019). This is associated with many undesirable outcomes, such as anxiety and unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, binge eating, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, intentional vomiting, consumption of laxative, diuretic, or weight loss pills, and even suicide attempts in adolescents (Cash et al., 2004; Neumark-Sztainer et al., 2006; Rodríguez-Cano et al., 2006). Therefore, developing efficient ways to maintain a positive body image is a worthy pursuit for both theoretical and practical reasons. In the present work, we examined one potentially efficient strategy: the modification of semantic associations between thinness and beauty. We reasoned that if this association is weakened, then the implicit belief that thinness is a defining attribute of female beauty will also be attenuated. Further, if such a belief plays an important role in shaping women’s body image concerns, then the techniques used to weaken the thin-beautiful association should also affect self-perception in terms of physical attractiveness and preoccupation with physical appearance. In what follows, we first discuss how the high standards of female thinness are internalized, and how this internalization could be changed through semantic retraining. Then, we present two studies conducted to test the effect of retraining on relevant beliefs and body image concerns, in terms of both implicit and explicit outcomes.

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