Effect of Television Watching on Skin Tone Preference

For the past 10 years or so, an international team of researchers has investigated the impacts of electrification and television access in rural villages in Nicaragua. Psychologists Lynda Boothroyd, Jean-Luc Jucker, and their colleagues have found, for example, that villagers with more access to TV (via electrification) typically prefer slimmer female bodies over heavier ones, probably because slimmer women are more often portrayed positively in news programs and telenovelas (Latin American soap operas).

In their latest investigation, published earlier this year, Jucker and Boothroyd’s team examined the relationship between watching TV and skin tone preferences (Jucker et al., 2024). They hypothesized that villagers who watched more TV would prefer lighter-skinned faces over darker-skinned faces.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers recruited 192 villagers in rural Nicaragua and 40 residents of the national capital Managua. Participants ranged in age from 15 to 78 years; 55 percent of them were female.

Participants were tested individually in a quiet place. They reported their income last year, their years of schooling, whether they have access to a TV, and how many hours of TV they watched in the last seven days.

The participants then completed a facial preference task. Using a laptop that presented 20 pairs of male faces and 20 pairs of female faces in random order, participants indicated which face within a pair they found most attractive or better looking. In each pair, one face was lighter-skinned and the other was darker-skinned. (To my eye, when looking at the pairs of faces, the difference in skin tone was noticeable but not obvious.)

The results were straightforward. First, participants overall preferred lighter-skinned faces over darker-skinned faces. Second, more educated participants showed a slightly stronger preference for lighter-skinned faces than did their less educated peers. Third, participants who watched more TV showed a slightly stronger preference for lighter-skinned female faces than did their peers who watched little or no TV.

In Nicaragua, lighter skin is associated with a greater degree of European (usually Spanish) ancestry, whereas darker skin is associated with a greater degree of indigenous (Miskitu Indian) ancestry. Interestingly, the rural villagers who participated in this study were Miskitu or Mestizo (mixed). Their choices in the face preference task revealed that they did not consistently prefer people "who look like me.” Instead, most of them preferred faces that were lighter-skinned than their own face.

These findings are consistent with conclusions drawn from cross-national studies that include participants from different cultural backgrounds. Specifically, cultural representations, especially those found in visual media, can affect our preferences and standards regarding physical beauty. Humans are not innately drawn to slimmer female bodies and paler faces, but these preferences can be formed via constant exposure to particular kinds of media images.

Television may not be a window to the world, but it does depict a world. It’s up to us, as viewers, to judge the desirability of that world.