College Students’ Self-Concepts and Attitude toward Advertising;The Relationships among the Body-Esteem, Social Comparison, and the Perception about Diet Advertising

There have been many studies dealing with the relationships between self-perceptions and the perceptions of advertising. However, research that focused specifically on diet advertising, which has recently seen a dramatic increase in our society, has been scarce. One can assume that people’s perceptions of diet advertising may be influenced by how they think about their own bodies or by the extent to which they compare their own bodies with those of others. For a more comprehensive understanding of the aforementioned relationships, this study analyzes the possible moderating role of body-esteem in predicting social comparison’s influence on the perceptions of diet advertising. The results of this study showed that people’s body-esteem level not only influences their attitude toward diet advertising, but also moderates the relationship between the attitude toward diet advertising and individuals’ social comparison orientation.