Body shaming on social media and its consequences for own-body perception in brain and behaviour

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During my undergraduate degree at the University of Kent, I completed a research topic entitled "Sleep deprivation, anxiety and depression and their effects on performance in eyewitness identification tasks". I undertook this one-year project under the Supervision of Marcus Bindemann. This project focused on the both cognition and forensic psychology. Within this research project, I used a number of materials in order to establish a link between the variables mentioned and the impact they have on an individual's ability to perform in an eyewitness identification task. In this research participants completed measures of anxiety, depression and sleep quality prior to exposure to a visual stimulus of a crime, participants were required to identify the guilty party in the crime. In the near future, I will be completing further research at the University of Essex under the supervision of Marcello Constantini, this project will focus on a more physiological approach to the study of human behaviour. My current research project is still in its early stages of planning; however, I hope to use a number of physiological measures in order to establish the impact of depression and anxiety on the sense of self an individual has. I have decided to complete a PhD to further my understanding of the physiological basis of human behaviour I developed a keen interest in Psychology at an early age, with a particular interest in both cognitive neuroscience and clinical psychology. I have focused my interest particularly on the physiological causes and effects of mental illness. For my PhD research, I hope to further this understanding by completing a research study with the provisional title of "Body shaming on social media and its consequences for own-body perception in brain and behaviour". Within this study, I aim to monitor an individual's behavioural response to body shaming stimuli, their visual response through the use of eye tracking as well video recordings of the behaviour after exposure and finally monitoring their brain activity through the use of electroencephalogram. This project aims to link both behavioural aspects of human nature with the physiological in order to establish the impact of body shaming media on an individuals' self-perception. This research aims to determine whether the increase in eating disorders is linked to the increase in body shaming in social media. This line of research is of particular interest to me as it combines both a neurological approach to studying behaviour with the study of clinical psychology as well as health psychology. This proposed research suggesting that individuals' self-perception's impacted by the negative feedback other people receive could change the way in which social media operates, increasing awareness of the negative impacts it is having and potentially change the way in which eating disorders and their treatment are managed. During my study of various areas within psychology I have developed a particular interest in health psychology and the study of mental illnesses, I have been working closely with an individual with drug-induced psychosis since November and have found that this illness, although life-changing has been controlled through application of psychological treatments. I feel the study of health psychology links well with my interest in cognitive neuroscience, as in enables a full understanding of the origins of the disorder and enables the development of treatments to improve the life of the suffering with the condition.