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........

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