Body image at the trunk: An investigation into externally referenced width perception and picture mapping

Body image is a conscious representation of the body, encompassing how our body feels to us. Body image can be measured in a variety of ways, including metric and depictive measures. This study sought to assess body image at the trunk by investigating, and comparing, a metric and depictive measure. Sixty-nine healthy participants estimated their thorax, waist, and hip width by externally referencing mechanical calipers. Participants were also asked to select the true image of their trunk from a random display of nine images containing the true image and incrementally shrunken or enlarged images. Participants demonstrated evidence of thorax and waist width overestimation in the width perception task, with no evidence for hip misestimation. For the picture mapping task, the majority of participants were inaccurate. In participants who were inaccurate, approximately equal proportions underestimated and overestimated their trunk width. The two tasks were found to be independent of each other. Distortions, or inaccuracies, were apparent in a metric measure, and inaccuracies also present in a depictive measure, of body image at the trunk for healthy participants. An overestimation bias was apparent in the metric, but not depictive, task. No relationship was found between tasks..