Self-esteem and negative affect as moderators of sociocultural influences on body dissatisfaction, strategies to decrease weight, and strategies to increase muscles among adolescent boys and girls
La. Ricciardelli et Mp. Mccabe, Self-esteem and negative affect as moderators of sociocultural influences on body dissatisfaction, strategies to decrease weight, and strategies to increase muscles among adolescent boys and girls, SEX ROLES, 44(3-4), 2001, pp. 189-207
The study was conducted to examine the impact of sociocultural influences a
nd the moderating role of self-esteem and negative affect on body dissatisf
action and body change strategies for both adolescent boys and girls. Surve
ys designed to assess body dissatisfaction, body change strategies to decre
ase weight and increase muscles, perceived sociocultural pressures to lose
weight and increase muscles, self-esteem and negative affect were administe
red to 587 boys and 598 girls aged between 11 and 15 years. The majority of
respondents were from Anglo-Australian backgrounds (83%) with the remainde
r being from Asian and European non-English-speaking backgrounds. The socio
cultural influences were found to significantly predict body dissatisfactio
n and body change strategies for both boys and girls. However, in the case
of boys, self-esteem was found to moderate the impact of the sociocultural
influences in predicting body change strategies. It was primarily the boys
with low self-esteem who were more affected by the sociocultural pressures
whereas the girls were affected independently of their self-esteem. Negativ
e affect was also found to play a moderating role on some of the sociocultu
ral influences in predicting strategies to increase muscles. Both boys and
girls with higher levels of negative affect were more likely to be affected
by sociocultural messages directed at increasing muscles. The results from
the present study demonstrate that as well as examining the direct influen
ce of sociocultural pressures, it is also important to examine how these ma
y be moderated by self-esteem and negative affect.