Belief in mind-body dualism and mental health: The case of body-image issues among social-media users.

大多数年轻人似乎与他们的身体有一种麻烦的关系。接触社交媒体是一个原因。事实上，年轻人在Instagram等平台上遭到极端比较标准的轰炸。这种暴露与不断增加的身体形象问题、功能失调的饮食和锻炼行为以及相关的心理健康困扰有关。这个项目采用了社会心理学和实验哲学的理论和方法，考察了这些比较标准、理想身体形象的产生和身体不满之间的相互作用。在这样做的过程中，它将重点放在人们如何解释他们自己和他们的身体之间的关系。三项研究将考察对身心二元论的信仰是否放大了与极端身体标准进行比较对理想身体形象生成的影响，以及极端身体形象对身体不满和随后的心理健康问题的影响。我认为，二元论提供了将身体解释为“心灵的容器”，并将自我与身体之间的距离。这反过来又允许参与者对自己的身体进行更极端的反事实心理表征--这一过程是由社交媒体上的比较推动的。第四项研究将阐明在对身体不满意后将自我与身体分离的潜在短期好处。在身体受到威胁的情况下，将自我与威胁的源头分开可能是维持自尊的一种短期策略。总之，拟议中的研究将增加我们对疏远的自我关系如何既能迅速解决，又能成为心理健康的长期问题的理解。

Most young adults seem to have a troublesome relationship with their bodies. Exposure to social media is a reason. Indeed, young adults are bombarded with extreme comparison standards on platforms such as Instagram. This exposure is linked to rising body-image issues, dysfunctional eating and exercising behaviours, and associated mental-health distress. Adopting theory and methodology from social psychology and experimental philosophy, the current project examines the interplay between such comparison standards, the generation of ideal body-images, and body dissatisfaction. In doing so it will focus on how people construe the relationship between their selves and their bodies. Three studies will examine if belief in mind-body dualism amplifies both the effect of comparing to extreme body standards on ideal body-image generation and the effect of extreme body-images on body dissatisfaction and subsequent mental-health issues. I argue that dualism affords construing the body as a "vessel for the mind" and putting distance between the self and the body. This in turn allows participants to create more extreme counterfactual mental representations of their bodies--a process motivated by comparison on social media. A fourth study will clarify potential short-term benefits of dissociating the self from the body following dissatisfaction with the body. Triggered by a threat to the body, dissociating the self from the source of the threat might function as a short-term strategy to maintain self-esteem. Together, the proposed studies will increase our understanding of how a distant self-body relationship can both be a quick fix and a long-term problem for mental health.