15.16 The accompanying underscoring pattern appears in the article “Women’s and Men’s Eating Behavior Following Exposure to Ideal-Body Images and Text” (Communications Research [2006]: 507–529). Women either viewed slides depicting images of thin female models with no text (treatment 1), viewed the same slides accompanied by diet and exercise-related text (treatment 2), or viewed the same slides accompanied by text that was unrelated to diet and exercise (treatment 3). A fourth group of women did not view any slides (treatment 4).

Participants were assigned at random to the four treatments. Participants were then asked to complete a questionnaire in a room where pretzels were set out on the tables. An observer recorded how many pretzels participants ate while completing the questionnaire.

Write a few sentences interpreting this underscoring pattern. (Hint: See Example 15.7.)

Treatment: 2 1 4 3 Mean number of pretzels consumed:

0.97 1.03 2.20 2.65