Tattoos: Health Care and Tattoo Essay Example

influences others' perceptions.

Hawkes et al6 and Degelman and Price4 performed 2 studies on the subject. In their research on 268 male and female undergraduates at a medium-sized Canadian university, Hawkes et al6 provided students with a written portrayal of a fabricated young woman. This description included her age, body type, current educational and work status, and details about a tattoo she possessed. The findings revealed that participants rated the woman more negatively when she was described as having a tattoo, particularly if it was relatively large and visible, compared to when she was described as not having a tattoo.

In a study conducted by Degelman and Price4, two groups of high school students were shown a photo of a female model. One group observed the model with a tattoo, while the other group saw her without any tattoos. After examining the photo, participants rated the model on 13 interpersonal traits. The findings revealed that when the model had a tattoo, participants gave her lower ratings in terms of multiple characteristics compared to when she did not have any tattoos.

The research mentioned above suggests that having tattoos can lead to a more negative assessment of an individual compared to someone without tattoos. Previous studies have not used photographs to investigate how college students perceive individuals with tattoos. In our study, we conducted two experiments using an experimental approach and photographs to explore the potential impact of tattoos on college students' perceptions. The first experiment focused exclusively on college students in order to validate Degelman and Price's findings, while the second experiment examined the perceptual effects of a small and discreet tattoo. Each experiment involved

participants viewing one photograph, either with or without a tattoo, featuring a woman from Resenhoeft et al.'s study. The presence or absence of the tattoo in the photo was the independent variable, while participants' evaluations of 13 interpersonal characteristics attributed to the model (such as fashion sense) served as dependent variables.

Participants used a 5-point scale to indicate their perception levels of 13 characteristics, with labels ranging from very unfashionable to very fashionable. Based on previous experimental and descriptive studies, we predicted that our 2 experiments would demonstrate a negative impact of tattoos on perceptions. Our sample consisted of students from a New Jersey community college.

The study involved participants from the school's psychology and nursing classes who were divided into two groups: the experimental group, which received a tattoo, and the control group, which did not receive a tattoo. A total of 158 participants provided written consent, and the study procedures were approved by the institutional review board.

Experiment 1

The study included 85 student participants from a community college in New Jersey. These students willingly took part in the study, and 37% of them were male with an average age of 21.64 years (standard deviation = 5.34). Additionally, 32% of the participants stated that they had permanent tattoos.

The participants were provided with a packet of materials that consisted of several items. These included a color photograph of a woman (which was previously used by Degelman and Price4), a rating scale for 13 personal characteristics to indicate perceptions of the model, a demographic survey, and a shortened 24-item attitude scale (similar to the one used by Degelman and Price4). The inclusion of

the attitude scale served the purpose of offering an unrelated task before viewing the photograph. This was done in order to reduce the chances of participants guessing the aim of the study.

In each packet, there was a color photograph of a 24-year-old woman wearing a black tube top, black pants, and close-toed shoes. The woman was kneeling and facing the camera. In the experimental group's photo, she had a black dragon tattoo on her upper left arm. In the control photo, the model did not have the tattoo, which we edited out using Macromedia's Fireworks version (Adobe Systems Inc, San Jose, CA).

Procedure

We notified participants that the purpose of the study was to examine how individuals form judgments about others.