DATE: August 21, 2025 at 10:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG
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TITLE: Too attractive to relate? Study suggests extreme beauty may backfire for fitness influencers
URL: https://www.psypost.org/too-attractive-to-relate-study-suggests-extreme-beauty-may-backfire-for-fitness-influencers/
A new study published in Psychology Marketing casts doubt on the long-standing marketing slogan that “sex sells”—at least when it comes to social media fitness influencers. Across several experiments, researchers found that highly attractive fitness influencers, or “fitfluencers,” tended to receive less engagement from audiences than their moderately attractive counterparts. The reason appears to center on relatability.
Fitfluencers are social media content creators who specialize in fitness, health, and wellness-related topics, often sharing workout routines, nutrition tips, and motivational content. What sets them apart from other influencers is the degree to which their physical appearance functions as both a personal brand and a form of credentialing. Defined muscles and athletic physiques are not just visually appealing—they serve as implicit evidence of the influencer’s expertise.
In this way, fitfluencers act as both lifestyle models and digital coaches, with their bodies reinforcing the credibility of the advice they share. Their popularity has surged in recent years, with tens of thousands of fitfluencers now active on platforms like Instagram.
The researchers behind the current study aimed to explore a less examined aspect of this dynamic: how a fitfluencer’s level of attractiveness affects audience engagement. While conventional wisdom in marketing suggests that attractive endorsers are more persuasive, the rise of influencer culture has brought new attention to the role of relatability—the sense that a content creator is accessible, similar, and psychologically close to their audience.
“This research paper is the result of a longstanding collaboration with a talented former student (and now coauthor) of mine—Justin Palmer—whom I’d advised in an independent study course in fall 2023,” said study author Andrew B. Edelblum (@dr_edelblum), an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Dayton School of Business Administration.
“Early conversations with Justin revolved around finding the right topical fit for our research. After all, publishing takes time, so it is helpful to find an area you genuinely enjoy thinking about. Justin and I eventually found a mutual interest in the health and fitness space, which turns out to be a fairly understudied area of online consumer behavior. As fellow workout enthusiasts—and digital nomads—we even found ourselves name-dropping some of the same fitness influencers on our follow list. So, the context was really a story of overlapping interests.”
“As for the focal effect, this actually came as somewhat of a happy accident, as many interesting findings often do,” Edelblum explained. “Our initial topic explored how consumers respond to fitness influencers sharing body-building tips, drawing on either empirical science or personal experience. We didn’t find consistent effects as we’d hypothesized in these initial experiments, but we did stumble upon something even more fascinating: In one pilot study, we found that, relative to a text-only fitness post, Instagram content depicting flesh-and-blood male and female fitness influencers performed worse on engagement metrics (e.g., liking, sharing).”
“This ran pretty counter to expectations. Intuition would suggest that the presence of people makes content more—not less—engaging. So, we thought very carefully about our fitness influencer stimuli, really considering what about them may have evoked a negative response. Then, it hit us: The fitness influencers pictured in that original study were… quite conventionally attractive. Chiseled abs, strong jawlines, and model-like complexions. What if it was good looks that soured participants on these posts? Thus, the roots of the beauty backfire effect were born.”
To investigate, the researchers ran three main experiments with U.S. adults recruited online. They manipulated the appearance of fitfluencers across high and moderate levels of attractiveness and observed how people responded to their content. Along the way, they measured not only liking and following behavior but also how relatable participants perceived the influencers to be.
In the first study, nearly 300 adults viewed a mock Instagram post offering fitness advice. Depending on the condition, the post included either a highly attractive female fitfluencer, a moderately attractive one, or a text-only version with no image. The caption and other elements were held constant across conditions.
Participants then rated the influencer on several attributes—including relatability, trustworthiness, likability, and appeal—and reported how likely they were to follow the account or like the post. The researchers also measured participants’ self-esteem using a standard scale.
The results revealed a pattern the authors refer to as the “beauty backfire effect.” The highly attractive fitfluencer was rated significantly less relatable than the moderately attractive one, and engagement intentions were lower as well. While the highly attractive influencer was still considered physically appealing, she was also viewed as less trustworthy, less helpful, and less likable. Relatability emerged as the strongest single factor explaining the drop in engagement.
Participants exposed to the highly attractive fitfluencer also reported slightly lower self-esteem, suggesting that such images may trigger unfavorable social comparisons. In contrast, the moderately attractive influencer was associated with a small boost in self-esteem—perhaps because her appearance felt more achievable or inspiring.
In the second study, the researchers tested whether this backfire effect was specific to fitness influencers or might generalize to other influencer types. They compared fitfluencers to “finfluencers”—social media influencers who offer personal finance advice. While both groups function as online coaches, only fitfluencers are judged heavily on their appearance.
Participants viewed mock Instagram posts featuring either a highly or moderately attractive female influencer giving tips related to fitness or finance. As before, they rated relatability and engagement intentions.
The results showed that attractiveness had a stronger impact on engagement in the fitness domain than in the finance one. Highly attractive fitfluencers were rated as significantly less relatable and received lower engagement than moderately attractive ones. For finance influencers, the effect was smaller and did not significantly impact engagement. This suggests that when an influencer’s credibility is tied to their looks—as it often is in fitness—the relatability gap caused by extreme attractiveness has more severe consequences.
In the third study, the researchers examined whether the way influencers present themselves might influence perceptions of relatability. Specifically, they manipulated the captions to signal either pride or humility.
In one version, the fitfluencer said, “I’ve always looked like this. True greatness is reserved for champions.” In the humble version, she wrote, “I haven’t always looked like this. It’s taken a lot of hard work.”
As expected, humble captions boosted relatability across the board. More importantly, they eliminated the engagement gap between highly and moderately attractive influencers. When the highly attractive fitfluencer acknowledged personal struggles and emphasized effort, followers were just as likely to engage with her content as they were with the moderately attractive version.
This suggests that even when beauty creates distance, it may be possible to bridge that gap with strategic messaging that signals authenticity and vulnerability.
“Many of us are dissatisfied with our bodies, fixated on the things about them we’d like to change or ‘correct,'” Edelblum told PsyPost. “Our personal fitness journeys are often rooted in insecurity and sensitivity, and prior work suggests that certain populations, like women and adolescents, are particularly susceptible to feeling bad about the way they look. So, as we go online for guidance, it’s really critical that we find coaching that feels accessible, approachable, and, as our research finds, relatable.”
“In an influencer domain—fitness—that already has an iffy reputation for eliciting negative emotions and pushing dubious diet products, our findings show that Adonis-like creators with perfect, immaculate physical features may only exacerbate the problem. The harmful upward comparisons are real, leaving everyday folks feeling insecure rather than empowered. In turn, it’s important that consumers seeking health and wellness guidance find creators who appear grounded in where they are. Our research suggests that this is how sustained connections are made.”
“On the influencer side, let’s face it: Some fitness people are genuinely blessed with undeniable chili pepper attractiveness. Does the beauty backfire effect suggest that these influencers are doomed to face more of an uphill battle in boosting their engagement numbers? Absolutely not. Our findings show that if you have 10/10 looks, keeping things humble can go a long way. In fact, we found that the beauty backfire effect completely vanished when highly attractive fitness influencers messaged in a way that addressed personal difficulties or was otherwise modest and ‘raw.'”
To investigate whether the beauty backfire effect extended to male fitfluencers, the researchers conducted two additional follow-up studies using experimental designs nearly identical to those in the main experiments. The pattern generally held for both genders, although the drop in relatability and engagement was more pronounced for female fitfluencers.
“While the core of our work focused on the general beauty backfire effect, we found some fascinating evidence that highly attractive female fitness influencers face more backlash than their male counterparts,” Edelblum said. “In other words, audiences seemed harsher toward women at the very top of the attractiveness scale. This may be tied to the extra scrutiny women often encounter around appearance on social media, where body image pressures are already intense. It raises questions about whether and when beauty can work against women online—and if similar biases show up in other areas, like race or disability.”
The study presents a detailed picture of how attractiveness interacts with relatability and engagement, but—as with all research—there are some caveats. The fitfluencers featured in the experiments were selected based on Western beauty norms, which may not generalize across cultures. Further research could explore how the effect plays out with different racial and cultural representations of beauty.
It also remains unclear how personal characteristics—like body image concerns or fitness experience—might moderate the beauty backfire effect. Some people may feel more inspired by idealized physiques, while others may feel discouraged. The findings raise questions about how audience demographics, social media habits, and personality traits shape engagement responses.
The study, “The Beauty Backfire Effect: How Extreme Attractiveness Undermines Fitfluencer Relatability and Engagement,” was authored by Andrew Edelblum, Abby Frank, and Justin Palmer.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/too-attractive-to-relate-study-suggests-extreme-beauty-may-backfire-for-fitness-influencers/
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