This study was performed to examine the effect of maladaptive perfectionism and self-objectification on the body-related emotion and behavior. The study surveyed 551 college students in Busan, Daegu and Jinju areas, and they filled out a questionnaire...
This study was performed to examine the effect of maladaptive perfectionism and self-objectification on the body-related emotion and behavior. The study surveyed 551 college students in Busan, Daegu and Jinju areas, and they filled out a questionnaire measuring self-objectification, multidimensional perfectionism, body-image related emotion and evaluation, body dissatisfaction, depression, body esteem, maladaptive eating attitude.
This study is based on self-objectification theory which insists bodily self-objectification by internalizing the 3rd person’s view through continuous pressure from outside, and supposes maladaptive perfectionism as a personality variable affecting self-objectification. It aims to replication and extend rather recently introduced self-objectification theory into Korea in sample of Korean college students.
The result of study analyzed by using structural equation modeling is as follows. In case of research model 1, male and female groups showed overall similar results as supposed in the research question, and as the effect of maladaptive perfectionism on the self-objectification was meaningful both in male and female groups it was confirmed that maladaptive perfectionism can affect self-objectification as a personality variable. As supposed in objectification theory, it was revealed that self-objectification has meaningful influence especially on the body-image related emotion and evaluation as well as maladaptive eating attitude. In general, female groups showed more sensitive response to the effect of maladaptive perfectionism and self-objectification than male groups. In case of research model 2, there was full mediation effect of body shame both in male and female groups supporting the results of previous studies that body shame is a strong variable which mediates self-objectification and maladaptive eating attitude.
Finally, the meaning and limits of this study was discussed.