Configural Processing of Human Bodies Is Influenced By Sociocultural Influences of Attaining Muscular or Thin Ideals of Body Shape: Evidence from the Inversion Effect.

Participants performed an inversion-effect paradigm requiring the visual discrimination of upright and inverted size-distorted pictures of bodies, faces and objects. Findings suggest that visual discrimination of other’s bodies and faces is differently influenced by the desire to attain muscular or thin body shape, which strongly pervade the western society.