The objective of this study is to verify the socio-cultural attitude toward appearance and objectified body-consciousness, developed based on adult women, to validate with adolescences, and to examine the effects of adolescences’ socio-cultural atti...
The objective of this study is to verify the socio-cultural attitude toward appearance and objectified body-consciousness, developed based on adult women, to validate with adolescences, and to examine the effects of adolescences’ socio-cultural attitude toward appearance and objectified body-consciousness on appearance management behavior. Six hundreds and sixty three high school students (332 male and 331 female) were participated in this survey. The hypotheses of this study were that who have higher objectified body-consciousness and socio-cultural attitude toward appearance would show higher degrees of appearance management behavior.
The results are as follow. First, male students’ socio-cultural attitudes toward appearance and the objectified body consciousness factor structures were identical to women’s factor structures, so the two concepts were validated to male adolescences. The two sub-factors of socio-cultural attitude toward appearance are awareness of appearance importance and internalization of socio-cultural standards, and objectified body consciousness is comprised of three factors: body-surveillance, body-shame, and body control beliefs. Except for body control beliefs, female students showed higher scores in each dimension. Second, female students did more appearance managements than male students, but male students had higher body satisfaction than female students. Third, as awareness of appearance importance and internalization of socio-cultural standards, the sub-factors of socio-cultural attitude toward appearance, were higher, the students did more appearance managements, and there was no difference between both genders. Forth, as body-surveillance and body-shame, the sub-factors of objectified body- consciousness, were higher, the students did more appearance managements. In female students’ case, body control beliefs were not related with appearance management behaviors, but in male students’ case, there was negative correlation between body control beliefs and appearance management behavior. Fifth, according to the result of regression analysis, four factors except internalization of socio-cultural standards were significant influence on appearance management behavior in male students. However, internalization of socio-cultural standards, body-surveillance and body-shame were significant factors on female students’appearance management behavior.
In conclusion, socio-cultural attitude toward appearance and objectified body-consciousness are determinant factors that influence on appearance management behavior. These results have suggested that it is very important to teach adolescences to make healthy beliefs and attitudes toward appearance.