Using psychophysical tools to quantify body image perception: A tutorial

Abstract

This article presents a tutorial about two protocols that can be used to measure an individual's perception of body image, direct and indirect, and which follow S.S. Stevens (1951) methods. Two psychophysical task approaches illustrate the ability of individuals to quantify body image distortions. We selected psychophysical tasks that indirectly assess a participant's behavioral component of body image (i.e., satisfaction tendencies about body image); and second, the cognitive component of body image (i.e., individuals' perceptual accuracy in magnitude estimation tasks, which depend on a familiarity with interval scales and the use of numbers and ratios to represent physical dimensions of stimuli). We determined individuals' perceptual sensitivity (i.e., his or her perceptual style) to manipulations of the body's size by using Stevens' power function (Stevens, 1951).