The risk of looking back at former versions of ourselves

For decades, body image researchers have focused almost exclusively on how we compare ourselves to others, and the toll it takes on our well-being. But a new study from The Ohio State University shows that we are often our own worst critics, especially when comparing who we are today with past versions of ourselves.

It is well-established that comparing your body to someone else’s can lead to a negative body image and disordered eating. Popular theories in the field suggest that across the lifespan, our peers, parents and the media we consume all reinforce societal beauty standards, driving people to measure their own value against unrealistic ideals. However, according to the study published recently in Body Image, people are just as likely to compare their current bodies to their former appearance, with equally harmful results. And few scholars have studied this phenomenon in-depth.

“There’s so much literature on social comparison, especially in body image and eating disorder literatures, and there’s virtually nothing on self-oriented comparison,” said lead author Tracy Tylka, a professor of clinical psychology at Ohio State’s Marion campus.

Findings in Tylka’s new work, and a measurement scale she and colleagues created and validated, may have potential to alter psychological treatment for people seeking help with adjusting to appearance-related changes – including aging.

“Self-oriented comparison matters. It is uniquely associated with body image and eating behavior,” she said. “In clinical treatment, we shouldn’t just focus on how clients are comparing themselves to others, but also how they are comparing themselves to previous versions of themselves.”

For Tylka, the gap became clear during conversations with her former Ohio State graduate student and the study’s co-author, Nichole Wood-Barcalow, who now works in private practice in Westerville, Ohio. Wood-Barcalow had noticed a pattern among her clients, who frequently compared their current appearance with how they looked in old photos, videos and memories of their younger selves.

They would tell Wood-Barcalow, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe how much I’ve changed.”

These reflections were often triggered by major life milestones and physical changes, including puberty, pregnancy, menopause, andropause, illness, aging and weight fluctuations. While some people felt they had changed for the better, most perceived these appearance-related shifts negatively.

Tylka has a deep background in psychometrics and analysis and has created scales that measure everything from intuitive eating and body appreciation to body acceptance by others. Established scales measuring social comparison are used regularly in research and clinical practice, so when Tylka searched for a trait-based scale to measure self-oriented comparison, she was surprised to learn it didn’t exist yet.

“Once we found out this was such an untouched construct with no scale developed to measure it, I knew we had to assess it,” she said.

Historically, she explained, body image and eating disorder research have focused on young white women or adolescents, who are comparing themselves more to others than to previous versions of the self.

“The body image field has been late to notice ageism and the lack of research on the aging process as it relates to body image. As we age, we move further away from what society tells us we should look like, and we compare ourselves to previous versions, photos or videos from decades ago,” Tylka said.

Tylka worked with Wood-Barcalow and other experts to design an 11-item measure of self-oriented appearance comparison, named the Self-Oriented Comparison Scale for Appearance (SOCS-A). They tested the scale across two separate community samples of U.S. adults to confirm its accuracy.

Through statistical analysis, the study confirmed support for two distinct subscales: upward and downward self-oriented comparison. Upward comparison involves measuring your current reflection against a past vision of yourself where you felt more attractive, while downward comparison means looking back at a photo, memory or time when you felt less attractive. Among study participants, researchers found that upward comparison was strongly linked to negative body image, body shame, rumination and disordered eating. Downward comparison, by contrast, was associated with lower levels of shame and higher appearance pride and body appreciation.

“What surprised us was that downward comparison was viewed more favorably. We were expecting a pattern more similar to social comparison, where downward comparison is also maladaptive,” Tylka said. “People think comparing themselves to others they view as less attractive would make them feel good, but downward social comparison is linked to body-focused shame, guilt and less body image flexibility.”

In other words, when we use others as a gauge to evaluate ourselves, we might feel bad for those other people or guilty for making comparisons. Downward self-oriented comparison, however, often means you worked to change or overcome something you didn’t like about your appearance, so you’re more likely to report feeling a sense of pride and accomplishment.

The study results also revealed gender differences. While the scale worked the same way structurally across the gender spectrum, women scored considerably higher than men on upward self-oriented comparison, while men scored higher on downward self-oriented comparison.

Tylka said this finding aligns with societal pressures: Women are expected to maintain a certain appearance, and if they deviate from that in any way, it tends to bother them more because their worth in society is often tied to appearance.

She hopes that the SOCS-A will be translated and used by research teams around the world – and in prevention programs, clinical interventions and therapy settings — to explore the experiences of diverse groups of people going through appearance-related changes and evaluate whether upward self-oriented comparison decreases as a result of treatment.

“Beyond age, I think (the SOCS-A) has relevance to be explored in the context of GLP-1 use,” Tylka added. “I am starting to do research with colleagues on GLP-1s, body image and eating behavior. We haven’t analyzed the data yet, but I think the intersection with self-oriented comparison will be really interesting.”

This work was funded by an Ohio State Joan Huber Fellowship Grant.