Examining the role of social physique anxiety on the relationship between physical appearance comparisons and disordered eating symptoms among Spanish emerging adults

Abstract

The present study extends previous research by examining the moderating/mediating role of social physique anxiety (SPA) on the relationship between physical appearance comparisons (PAC) and symptoms of disordered eating (DE) in adolescent population. A total of 555 emerging adults (59% women) ranging from 18 to 30 years of age (M = 21.34, SD = 2.80) were recruited from two public universities from Spain using a non-probabilistic sampling technique. Participants completed a self-reported questionnaire comprising the variables of research interest. Once the effects of sex (i.e., being men or women), age, body mass index, and depressive symptoms were controlled for, the results from bootstrapping cross-sectional regression analyses supported both the moderating and mediating effect of SPA on the relationship between PAC and DE. Sex did not moderate any of these relationships. From these findings, it follows that incorporating strategies aimed at decreasing PAC and SPA may contribute to improved prevention efforts aimed at decreasing DE among Spanish emerging adults of both sexes.

Psychometric Examination of the Body, Eating, and Exercise Comparison Orientation Measure (BEECOM) among Spanish Adolescents and Young Adults

“…This also implies that the instrument can be recommended for the purpose of conducting reasonably unbiased comparisons between the population groups under consideration in terms of self-reported levels of body, eating, and exercise comparison orientation. In this vein, the pattern of differences observed in body-related comparisons between the age and gender groups considered in the present study is consistent with prior research [ 10 , 12 , 24 ]. We refer to the fact that body-related comparison scores favored females and individuals in their young adulthood over males and adolescents, respectively.…”

“…Higher scores imply higher frequency of physical appearance comparisons. Evidence has been found that supports the validity and reliability of the scores of this instrument in both male and female individuals from Spain [ 10 , 12 ]. Values ≥ 0.943 ( α ) and 0.962 (ρ) were found for the total score of the PACS-R in the present study (see Table 1 for details).…”

“…In the event that evidence was obtained to support measurement invariance of the BEECOM scores across age and gender groups, a secondary goal of the present study was to examine gender and age differences in ED-related comparison orientation. It was hypothesized that, in line with previous research examining appearance-focused comparisons [ 10 , 12 , 24 ], small-to-intermediate-sized differences would be found in favor of groups consisting of females and younger adults.…”

“…A cognitive process that has been consistently identified as a modifiable risk factor for ED is the tendency towards body/appearance-related social comparison [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. However, an emerging line of research has begun to demonstrate that further consideration of comparisons focused on actions aimed at improving body appearance, such as eating or exercise behavior, may provide deeper insight into the cognitive processes underlying ED [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ].…”

A model linking digital media dependence, exercise empowerment, and social physique anxiety among emerging adulthood college students

“…Previous studies have found that emerging adulthood characteristics are related to psychological variables such as happiness (Reifman et al, 2007), risk behavior, self-esteem (Galambos and Martínez, 2007), depression (Luyckx et al, 2011), and social anxiety (Lanctot and Poulin, 2018) in emerging adults. It has been shown that emerging adults are more prone to SPA (Alcaraz-Ibáñez et al, 2020;Alcaraz-Ibanez and Sicilia, 2020;Pritchard et al, 2021;Swami et al, 2021) since body image is their primary concern (Neumark-Sztainer et al, 2018). There is also evidence that mass media's idealization of body image can induce SPA in emerging adults (Sabiston and Chandler, 2009), and women who spend more time on social media have higher SPA (McColgan and Paradis, 2022).…”