Digitally created body positivity: The effects of virtual influencers with different body types on viewer perceptions

Exposure to idealized body imagery on social media has been linked to lower body satisfaction/appreciation, negative mood effects, and mental health risks. Serving as a potential counterforce to these severe issues, body-positive content creators advocate for broader conceptualizations of beauty, more inclusivity, and self-acceptance among social media users. Amidst this on-going discourse, hyper-realistic virtual influencers (VIs) have emerged as novel social agents—some reinforcing traditional beauty ideals and others promoting more diversity. Experiment 1 (N = 337) examined how VIs with different body types (larger-sized versus thin-ideal) influence women’s state body appreciation and perceptions of ideal body shapes. Experiment 2 (N = 462) further investigated whether VIs elicit user responses in a way comparable to human influencers, considering ontological distinctions and perceived self-similarity. Across both experiments, neither body type nor influencer type significantly influenced women’s body appreciation or body-related ideals. Whereas several proposed moderating variables did not result in significant findings, perceptions of self-similarity were ultimately found to play a meaningful role: Human influencers were perceived as more self-similar, and this perception was positively linked to body appreciation. Taken together, our mixed findings indicate that VIs may exert a weaker impact on young women’s body perceptions than expected—at least in the short term. As such, future research might benefit from focusing more on potential long-term effects.