Journalof Adolescence1992, 15,193-205
Correlates of appearance anxiety in late adolescence and early adulthood among young women J. PATRICK
R. AND
KEELAN,*
KAREN
KENNETH
L.
K.
DION
DION
The relation of childhood and early adolescent social experiences with young women’s concern over physical appearance (appearance anxiety) in late adolescence and early adulthood was examined. Female undergraduates completed questionnaires assessing appearance anxiety and a questionnaire assessing childhood and early adolescent experiences hypothesized to relate to appearance anxiety as well as current behaviors hypothesized to reflect it. The results suggest that appearance anxiety in women is related to reported negative social experiences in childhood and early adolescence. These experiences were suggested to lead to dissatisfaction with their childhood and early adolescent appearances which in turn was related to appearance anxiety in late adolescence and early adulthood. Appearance anxiety was also found to be related to current social experiences. The most obvious manifestation of appearance anxiety in young women was relatively greater reported attention to improving their appearance.
INTRODUCTION
Research indicates the importance of physical attractiveness in affecting the evaluation of individuals across a variety of domains. Dion, Berscheid and Walster (1972) labelled this phenomenon, “What is beautiful is good.” In their study, participants exhibited stereotyping on the basis of physical attractiveness by rating attractive individuals in photographs as having more socially desirable personalities than unattractive individuals. The effects of attractiveness stereotyping are wide-ranging. For example, attractive people are liked more as friends (Byrne, London and Reeves, 1968; Dion and Berscheid, 1974), dates (Green, Buchanan and Heuer, 1984; Stretch and Figley, 1980; Walster, Aronson, Abrahams and *Reprint University
requests should be addressed to J. Patrick R. Keelan, *Department of Psychology, of Toronto,
0140-1971/92/020193+13
Toronto, $03.00/O
Ontario
MSS
lA1,
Canada.
0 1992 The Association
for the Psychiatric
Study
of Adolescents
194
J. P. R. KEELAN ET AL.
Rottman, 1966), and sex partners (Kaats and Davis, 1970). Attractive people are also less easily forgotten (Kleck and Rubenstein, 1975), more likely to be offered assistance (Wilson, 1978), and less likely to be treated in a superficial manner (Pellegrini, Hicks, Meyers-Winston and Antal, 1978). See, for example, Adams (1977; 1982), Cash (1981) and Dion (1986) for reviews of the importance of physical attractiveness. Although first demonstrated with young adults, attractiveness stereotyping was later shown to occur also with both children (Adams and Crane, 1980; Dion, 1973; Dion and Berscheid, 1974) and adolescents (Cavior and Dokecki, 1973; Cavior, Miller and Cohen, 1975; Lerner and Lerner, 1977), particularly in the area of social relations. Both children and adolescents who are physically attractive enjoy more social success than do those who are relatively less attractive. The effect of attractiveness stereotyping on children and adolescents is double-barrelled. Not only do looks have an impact on social success, their importance is large enough to affect how children and adolescents feel about themselves. The impact of attractiveness in this regard has been found to extend to self-concept (Rossen and Ross, 1968), self-esteem (Krantz, Friedberg and Andrews, 1985; Pomerantz, 1979), personal adjustment (Musa and Roach, 1973), depression (Teri, 1982), and emotional disturbance (Katchadourian, 1976). As Ogundari (1985) indicated, the range of reactions to realizing one is perceived by others to be unattractive is wide: “Adolescents’ feelings and reactions to somatic deviations vary from uneasiness and self-consciousness to severe embarrassment” (p. 180). Both theory and research suggest that early adolescence is a period in which concern over one’s appearance becomes predominant. In terms of theory, Havighurst (1972, p. 51) indicated that one of the major developmental tasks of adolescence is “accepting one’s physique and using the Elkind (1967) indicated that early adolescents develop body effectively.” the concept of an “imaginary audience” - the idea that others are constantly observing them. Consistent with this concept would be an increasing concern over one’s appearance in early adolescence. Among the previous studies which showed a heightened concern over appearance in early adolescence was a large-scale interview study conducted by Simmons and Rosenberg (1975). They interviewed 1900 female and male students in grades 3 to 12. Self-consciousness about one’s self-image was found to increase sharply in the early teens. In particular, the greatest degree of change in self-consciousness emerged during the 12 to 14 age period. In an earlier study, Simmons, Rosenberg, and Rosenberg (1973) found greater dissatisfaction over one’s appearance among early adolescents
APPEARANCE
ANXIETY
195
compared with younger children. It has also been found that dissatisfaction with one’s physical appearance is related to greater self-consciousness and lower self-esteem among adolescents (Simmons & Rosenberg, 1975). Because attractiveness stereotyping in children and adolescents is salient enough to affect how they feel about themselves at the time, it seems plausible that this discomfort may linger into late adolescence and early adulthood. That is, an individual with relatively more negative social experiences regarding appearance in childhood and early adolescence would be expected to feel greater discomfort and concern about the way he or she looks in late adolescence and early adulthood. On the other hand, if the childhood and early adolescent experiences pertaining to her or his appearance are more positive, an individual would likely experience relatively less discomfort in late adolescence and early adulthood. Cash, Winstead and Janda (1986) provided evidence suggestive of the relationship between appearance-related discomfort in late adolescence and appearance-related social history experiences which we hypothesized. In a large scale survey, they found that women who had been teased about their appearance as children had a greater likelihood of being dissatisfied with their appearance during adulthood. Thompson and Psaltis (1988) replicated this finding as they obtained significant correlations between history of teasing and current levels of body image dissatisfaction and eating disturbance in college women. For a discussion of the relation between physical appearance teasing history and body image dissatisfaction, see Thompson, Fabian, Moulton, Dunn and Altabe (1991). In previous research (Dion, Dion and Keelan, 1990), the label “appearance anxiety” was applied to the type of concern regarding one’s physical appearance which was the focus of the present study. In the earlier study, we defined appearance anxiety as apprehension concerning different aspects of one’s physical appearance and how others evaluate them. In the same study, we provided preliminary evidence of construct validity for a measure of appearance anxiety by devising a 32-item scale to assess this dimension. As expected, appearance anxiety correlated moderately and positively (Y of 0.39 and 0.32) with other measures of social anxiety: Leary’s (1983) measures of interaction and audience anxiety, respectively. A positive correlation (r = 0.31) was also obtained between appearance anxiety and scores on Watson and Friend’s (1969) Social Avoidance and Distress Scale, an earlier measure of social anxiety than Leary’s. These positive correlations between appearance anxiety and forms of social anxiety were expected, given that appearance anxiety is hypothesized to be related to social anxiety but not to be entirely redundant with other aspects of social anxiety. Given evidence of construct validity, a logical subsequent step was to
196
J. P. R. KEELAN
ET AL.
investigate possible sources of appearance anxiety. The route we chose in this undertaking was to explore the correlates of appearance anxiety in the retrospective, social experiences of young adult university students. In the present study, participants completed a social history/lifestyle questionnaire in addition to the appearance anxiety scale. The former questionnaire was designed to determine which experiences, if any, from an individual’s developmental history in childhood and adolescence relate to appearance anxiety, along with current lifestyle practices and behaviors which may be manifestations of it. All the statements in the questionnaire refer to social history experiences and lifestyle practices which we expected to relate to appearance anxiety. Based on previous research demonstrating the importance of physical attractiveness in childhood and early adolescence, several of the social history experiences were hypothesized to occur in the childhood and early adolescent years of those anxious about their appearance. We hypothesized that memories of negative social history experiences in one’s childhood and early adolescence would be positively related to appearance anxiety manifested in late adolescence and early adulthood. Further, self-reports of current lifestyle practices indicative of a concern about one’s appearance were also expected to be associated with stronger feelings of appearance anxiety, as further evidence of the construct validity of appearance anxiety. Our research considered a wider range of social history experiences as possible developmental correlates of appearance anxiety than suggested by Cash et al. (1986), Thompson and Psaltis (1988) and Thompson et al. (1991). The focus of those studies was teasing related to physical appearance as a possible developmental correlate of late adolescent and young adult dissatisfaction with appearance. It should be noted that retrospective reports were used to gather data on participants’ social history experiences from childhood and adolescence in the present study. This method of data collection may suffer from distortions in memory between the time of the events and the time at which participants report on the events. The issue of the extent to which such problems with retrospective reports may have affected the results of this study will be considered in the Discussion section.
METHOD
Participants Participants were 106 female introductory psychology students at the University of Toronto, Scarborough campus. Thirty-five male participants were tested but their data were not used in the analyses because they
APPEARANCE
ANXIETY
197
were too few in number for the principal components analysis which was called for in the research design. Participants were recruited by posting sign-up sheets for various time periods on a bulletin board on campus. The study was advertised as an “Assessment of Personality” study. The data from four female participants were not included in the analyses because they were more than 24-years-old. This age limit was determined on the basis of the research area under investigation. The resulting sample on which analyses were based consisted of 102 female participants. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 24 years, with a median age of 19 years. Instruments Appearance
anxiety questionnaire
This questionnaire included 32 statements designed to assess anxiety about one’s physical appearance. The questionnaire gave the following instructions to participants: “For each of the items below, indicate to what extent the statement is true or characteristic of you using the following scale, where 0 = never, 1 = sometimes, 2 = often, 3 = very often, and 4 = almost always.” The scale was balanced with respect to statements indicating concern and lack of concern for appearance. Among the statements which expressed concern for appearance were: “I feel nervous about aspects of my physical appearance”; “I get nervous when others comment on my appearance “., “I feel ill at ease if I do not have enough time to make myself look good in the morning”; and “I wish that I was better looking”. Some statements indicating lack of concern for appearance were: “I am comfortable with my appearance”; “I like how I look”; “I feel comfortable with my facial attractiveness”; and “I am confident that others see me as physically appealing.” Cronbach’s alpha for the appearance anxiety questionnaire in this study was 0.85. Because this alpha value is acceptable as evidence of internal consistency reliability, an “appearance anxiety index” was created by summing participants’ scores across the questionnaire items. Higher scores indicated a greater degree of appearance anxiety. Items reflecting lack of concern about appearance were reversed before summing. Social history/lifestyle
questionnaire
This scale was designed to assess experiences from participants’ social histories as well as current lifestyle practices which should be behavioral manifestations of appearance anxiety. It consisted of two sections with different instructions and response formats. The instructions for Section A were as follows: “For each of the items
J. P. R. KEELAN
198
ET AL.
below, please respond using the following scale, where 1 = never, 2 = occasionally, 3 = frequently, 4 = very frequently.” Instructions for Section B were as follows: “For each of the items below, please indicate a response of either Yes or No by marking ‘Y’ for a Yes response or ‘N’ for a No response.” Statements beside which participants gave a numerical response followed the instructions. Both sections of the questionnaire contained statements concerning both social history experiences and present-day behaviors. The primary difference between the two sections was in response format. Please refer to Tables 1 and 2 in the Results section for examples of questionnaire items. Demographic questionnaire A third questionnaire was administered to obtain tion such as the age and sex of participants.
demographic
informa-
Procedure Participants completed the questionnaires in sessions of up to 12 persons in which each person was seated at a separate table. Upon entering the testing room, participants signed a consent form. They were then asked to complete the appearance anxiety questionnaire, the social history/lifestyle questionnaire, and the demographic questionnaire. The order in which the appearance anxiety and social history/lifestyle questionnaires was completed by participants was counterbalanced. No effects of order of questionnaires were obtained in the analyses reported subsequently. After respondents had completed the questionnaires, the purpose of the study was explained to them.
RESULTS
Mean appearance anxiety score for entire sample The mean summated score for all participants on the appearance anxiety index was 57.43. Dividing the mean summated score by the number of scale items yielded a mean item score of 1.8. When viewed in terms of the numerical format of the scale, this mean item score indicated that participants overall reported experiencing appearance anxiety often. Principal Principal
components analysis of social history/lifestyle
components
analyses with varimax
rotation
items
were performed
on
APPEARANCE
Table 1.
199
ANXIETY
Varimax rotated factors for section A items of social history/lifestyle
scale
Factor 1 (social activities
with the other sex) “As an adolescent, I went out with groups of friends from both sexes.” (0.76) “I attended social events such as school dances in high school.” (0.75) “I currently go out with groups of friends from both sexes.” (0.74) “In high school, I participated in social activities on Saturday nights.” (0.71) “I go to parties.” (0.69) “I go dancing.” (0.69) “At high school dances, I was asked to dance by members of the opposite sex.” (0.66) “How often did you date as an adolescent?” (0.60)
Factor 2 (being unconcerned
with checking and adjusting one’s appearance) “I carry a comb or brush with me.” (-0.66) (R) “I look at myself in the mirror to check my appearance.” (-0.65) (R) “I wear makeup.” (-0.61) (R)
Factor 3 (negative
comments about one’s appearance) “Other students made fun of my appearance when I was in elementary school.” (0.73) “Members of the opposite sex made negative comments about my appearance when I was a high school student.” (0.66)
Factor 4 (avoiding
strangers) “At social functions such as parties, I spend my time with people I know already instead of meeting new people.” (0.81) “At social functions such as parties, members of the opposite sex whom I have not met approach me.” (-0.62) (R) “At social functions such as parties, I approach members of the opposite sex whom I have not met.” (-0.60) (R) Values in parentheses are rotated factor loadings. “R” indicates for the item in question before summing to obtain index scores.
reverse
scoring
was performed
both sections of the social history/lifestyle questionnaire to identify sets of items that clustered together. Parallel analysis (Longman, Cota, Holden and Fekken, 1989) was used to determine the number of factors to retain. This technique involves comparing eigenvalues from the actual data set with those from a randomly generated data set in order to specify the number of factors to retain. The factors identified through this procedure were used to define indices for each type of rating. For Section A, four factors resulted, accounting for 41.5% of the overall variance. The percent variance accounted for by Factors 1 to 4 were 18.1, 8.2, 7.6 and 7.6, respectively. Items were included in indices based on a rotated factor loading criterion of 0.60. This criterion was chosen to minimize item overlap from factor to factor in defining indices, while still
200
J. P. R. KEELAN
ET
AL.
allowing clear identification and labeling of the factors and the items. The labels for the factors included in each index are listed in Table 1. As Table 1 shows, the factors reflected various reported social experiences from individuals’ pasts along with current behaviors. Factor 1 contained items pointing to engagement in social activities involving members of the other sex. Factor 2 reflected being unconcerned with checking and adjusting one’s appearance. Factor 3 contained items indicative of negative feedback received from others concerning one’s appearance in the past. Factor 4 focused on the tendency to avoid others or to be avoided by others in social situations. Six factors were generated by the aforementioned procedure for Section B, accounting for 48.9% of the total variance. The percent of variance accounted for by Factors 1 to 6 were 8.9, 9.1, 8.0, 6.7, 9.7 and 6.5, respectively. Items were included in indices based on a rotated factor loading criterion of O-58. As with the analysis for Section A, this criterion was chosen to minimize item overlap from factor to factor while still Table 2.
Varimax rotated factors for section B items of social history/lifestyle
scale
Factor 1 (past and present dating)
“I had a date for my high school’s prom (farewell dance).” (0.81)
“I am currently
sex.”
involved
in an exclusive
relationship
with a member
of the opposite
(0.75)
Factor 2 (being displeased
with one’s childhood appearance) “I enjoyed having my picture taken as a child.” (-0.78) (R) “I was happy with my physical appearance as a child.” (-0.58)
(R)
Factor 3 (acting
to improve one’s appearance) “I have changed my hair color.” (0.80) “As an adolescent, I suffered from acne.” (0.67) “I have consulted a dermatologist.” (0.61)
Factor 4 (being pleased with one’s adolescent
appearance) “I was pleased with my physical attractiveness as an adolescent.” “I enjoyed having my picture appear in high-school yearbooks.”
Factor 5 (classmates “I attended “I attended
of both sexes) a high school with both male and female an elementary school with only members
(0.88) (0.73).
on appearance vs. apparel) “Wearing stylish clothes is important to me.” (-0.80) “I wash my hair at least once a day.” (0.61)
students.” (0.77) of the same sex.” (-0.72)
(R)
Factor 6 (focusing
(R)
Values in parentheses are rotated factor loadings. “R” indicates for the item in question before summing to obtain index scores.
reverse
scoring
was performed
APPEARANCE
201
ANXIETY
allowing clear identification and labelling of the factors. The labels for the factors and the items included in each index are listed in Table 2. Factor 1 referred to whether one has dated in the past and in the present. Factor 2 had as its theme dissatisfaction with one’s childhood physical appearance. Factor 3 was comprised of reported actions to improve one’s appearance and circumstances prompting such actions. Factor 4 had as its theme reported satisfaction with one’s adolescent appearance. Factor 5 was reflective of past attendance at coeducational schools. Factor 6 reflected focusing on appearance vs. apparel. Index scores for each participant were obtained by taking the simple, unweighted sum of their scores on items comprising the index. Such indices would be referred to as “factor-based scales” by Kim and Mueller (1978). A “factor-based scale” is constructed by “summing all the variables with substantial loadings and ignoring the remaining variables with minor loadings” (p. 70). In contrast to factor scores, variations in factor loadings are ignored in creating factor-based scales; for factor-based scales, one asks only whether a variable or item loads on a factor or not. Kim and Mueller have characterized factor-based scale construction as reflecting a “conservative stance,” in that the dimensions revealed by factor analysis are taken as being only suggestive and indicating “some clustering in the data and no more” (pp. 71-72). Before summing, score reversals were performed on negatively-loading items. Relationship
of social history/lifestyle
indices to appearance
anxiety
The following factors correlated significantly with appearance anxiety scores: “being displeased with one’s childhood appearance,” ~(92) = 0.40, p < 0.01, “being pleased with one’s adolescent appearance,” ~(92) = -0.23, p < 0.05, “being unconcerned with checking and adjusting one’s appearance,” ~(92) = -0.29, p < 0.01, and “past and present dating,” ~(92) = -0.21, p < 0.05. Two indices were marginally significant in their correlation with the appearance anxiety index: “social activities with the other sex”, ~(92) = -0.18, p < 0.10 and “negative comments about one’s appearance,” ~(92) = O-18, p < 0.10. Relation between social success in each developmental
period and appearance
anxiety in young university women
The previous analyses pointed to several social history experiences which may be related to appearance anxiety in young university women. A remaining issue to be addressed was whether self-reported social success in childhood, adolescence and/or early adulthood is related to appearance anxiety in late adolescent and early adult young university women.
202
J. P. R. KEELAN
Table 3.
Mean appearance anxiety scores for university women high and low in social success at three developmental periods
Period Childhood Adolescence Early Adulthood
**
Correlates of appearance anxiety in late adolescence and early adulthood among young women J. PATRICK
R. AND
KEELAN,*
KAREN
KENNETH
L.
K.
DION
DION
The relation of childhood and early adolescent social experiences with young women’s concern over physical appearance (appearance anxiety) in late adolescence and early adulthood was examined. Female undergraduates completed questionnaires assessing appearance anxiety and a questionnaire assessing childhood and early adolescent experiences hypothesized to relate to appearance anxiety as well as current behaviors hypothesized to reflect it. The results suggest that appearance anxiety in women is related to reported negative social experiences in childhood and early adolescence. These experiences were suggested to lead to dissatisfaction with their childhood and early adolescent appearances which in turn was related to appearance anxiety in late adolescence and early adulthood. Appearance anxiety was also found to be related to current social experiences. The most obvious manifestation of appearance anxiety in young women was relatively greater reported attention to improving their appearance.
INTRODUCTION
Research indicates the importance of physical attractiveness in affecting the evaluation of individuals across a variety of domains. Dion, Berscheid and Walster (1972) labelled this phenomenon, “What is beautiful is good.” In their study, participants exhibited stereotyping on the basis of physical attractiveness by rating attractive individuals in photographs as having more socially desirable personalities than unattractive individuals. The effects of attractiveness stereotyping are wide-ranging. For example, attractive people are liked more as friends (Byrne, London and Reeves, 1968; Dion and Berscheid, 1974), dates (Green, Buchanan and Heuer, 1984; Stretch and Figley, 1980; Walster, Aronson, Abrahams and *Reprint University
requests should be addressed to J. Patrick R. Keelan, *Department of Psychology, of Toronto,
0140-1971/92/020193+13
Toronto, $03.00/O
Ontario
MSS
lA1,
Canada.
0 1992 The Association
for the Psychiatric
Study
of Adolescents
194
J. P. R. KEELAN ET AL.
Rottman, 1966), and sex partners (Kaats and Davis, 1970). Attractive people are also less easily forgotten (Kleck and Rubenstein, 1975), more likely to be offered assistance (Wilson, 1978), and less likely to be treated in a superficial manner (Pellegrini, Hicks, Meyers-Winston and Antal, 1978). See, for example, Adams (1977; 1982), Cash (1981) and Dion (1986) for reviews of the importance of physical attractiveness. Although first demonstrated with young adults, attractiveness stereotyping was later shown to occur also with both children (Adams and Crane, 1980; Dion, 1973; Dion and Berscheid, 1974) and adolescents (Cavior and Dokecki, 1973; Cavior, Miller and Cohen, 1975; Lerner and Lerner, 1977), particularly in the area of social relations. Both children and adolescents who are physically attractive enjoy more social success than do those who are relatively less attractive. The effect of attractiveness stereotyping on children and adolescents is double-barrelled. Not only do looks have an impact on social success, their importance is large enough to affect how children and adolescents feel about themselves. The impact of attractiveness in this regard has been found to extend to self-concept (Rossen and Ross, 1968), self-esteem (Krantz, Friedberg and Andrews, 1985; Pomerantz, 1979), personal adjustment (Musa and Roach, 1973), depression (Teri, 1982), and emotional disturbance (Katchadourian, 1976). As Ogundari (1985) indicated, the range of reactions to realizing one is perceived by others to be unattractive is wide: “Adolescents’ feelings and reactions to somatic deviations vary from uneasiness and self-consciousness to severe embarrassment” (p. 180). Both theory and research suggest that early adolescence is a period in which concern over one’s appearance becomes predominant. In terms of theory, Havighurst (1972, p. 51) indicated that one of the major developmental tasks of adolescence is “accepting one’s physique and using the Elkind (1967) indicated that early adolescents develop body effectively.” the concept of an “imaginary audience” - the idea that others are constantly observing them. Consistent with this concept would be an increasing concern over one’s appearance in early adolescence. Among the previous studies which showed a heightened concern over appearance in early adolescence was a large-scale interview study conducted by Simmons and Rosenberg (1975). They interviewed 1900 female and male students in grades 3 to 12. Self-consciousness about one’s self-image was found to increase sharply in the early teens. In particular, the greatest degree of change in self-consciousness emerged during the 12 to 14 age period. In an earlier study, Simmons, Rosenberg, and Rosenberg (1973) found greater dissatisfaction over one’s appearance among early adolescents
APPEARANCE
ANXIETY
195
compared with younger children. It has also been found that dissatisfaction with one’s physical appearance is related to greater self-consciousness and lower self-esteem among adolescents (Simmons & Rosenberg, 1975). Because attractiveness stereotyping in children and adolescents is salient enough to affect how they feel about themselves at the time, it seems plausible that this discomfort may linger into late adolescence and early adulthood. That is, an individual with relatively more negative social experiences regarding appearance in childhood and early adolescence would be expected to feel greater discomfort and concern about the way he or she looks in late adolescence and early adulthood. On the other hand, if the childhood and early adolescent experiences pertaining to her or his appearance are more positive, an individual would likely experience relatively less discomfort in late adolescence and early adulthood. Cash, Winstead and Janda (1986) provided evidence suggestive of the relationship between appearance-related discomfort in late adolescence and appearance-related social history experiences which we hypothesized. In a large scale survey, they found that women who had been teased about their appearance as children had a greater likelihood of being dissatisfied with their appearance during adulthood. Thompson and Psaltis (1988) replicated this finding as they obtained significant correlations between history of teasing and current levels of body image dissatisfaction and eating disturbance in college women. For a discussion of the relation between physical appearance teasing history and body image dissatisfaction, see Thompson, Fabian, Moulton, Dunn and Altabe (1991). In previous research (Dion, Dion and Keelan, 1990), the label “appearance anxiety” was applied to the type of concern regarding one’s physical appearance which was the focus of the present study. In the earlier study, we defined appearance anxiety as apprehension concerning different aspects of one’s physical appearance and how others evaluate them. In the same study, we provided preliminary evidence of construct validity for a measure of appearance anxiety by devising a 32-item scale to assess this dimension. As expected, appearance anxiety correlated moderately and positively (Y of 0.39 and 0.32) with other measures of social anxiety: Leary’s (1983) measures of interaction and audience anxiety, respectively. A positive correlation (r = 0.31) was also obtained between appearance anxiety and scores on Watson and Friend’s (1969) Social Avoidance and Distress Scale, an earlier measure of social anxiety than Leary’s. These positive correlations between appearance anxiety and forms of social anxiety were expected, given that appearance anxiety is hypothesized to be related to social anxiety but not to be entirely redundant with other aspects of social anxiety. Given evidence of construct validity, a logical subsequent step was to
196
J. P. R. KEELAN
ET AL.
investigate possible sources of appearance anxiety. The route we chose in this undertaking was to explore the correlates of appearance anxiety in the retrospective, social experiences of young adult university students. In the present study, participants completed a social history/lifestyle questionnaire in addition to the appearance anxiety scale. The former questionnaire was designed to determine which experiences, if any, from an individual’s developmental history in childhood and adolescence relate to appearance anxiety, along with current lifestyle practices and behaviors which may be manifestations of it. All the statements in the questionnaire refer to social history experiences and lifestyle practices which we expected to relate to appearance anxiety. Based on previous research demonstrating the importance of physical attractiveness in childhood and early adolescence, several of the social history experiences were hypothesized to occur in the childhood and early adolescent years of those anxious about their appearance. We hypothesized that memories of negative social history experiences in one’s childhood and early adolescence would be positively related to appearance anxiety manifested in late adolescence and early adulthood. Further, self-reports of current lifestyle practices indicative of a concern about one’s appearance were also expected to be associated with stronger feelings of appearance anxiety, as further evidence of the construct validity of appearance anxiety. Our research considered a wider range of social history experiences as possible developmental correlates of appearance anxiety than suggested by Cash et al. (1986), Thompson and Psaltis (1988) and Thompson et al. (1991). The focus of those studies was teasing related to physical appearance as a possible developmental correlate of late adolescent and young adult dissatisfaction with appearance. It should be noted that retrospective reports were used to gather data on participants’ social history experiences from childhood and adolescence in the present study. This method of data collection may suffer from distortions in memory between the time of the events and the time at which participants report on the events. The issue of the extent to which such problems with retrospective reports may have affected the results of this study will be considered in the Discussion section.
METHOD
Participants Participants were 106 female introductory psychology students at the University of Toronto, Scarborough campus. Thirty-five male participants were tested but their data were not used in the analyses because they
APPEARANCE
ANXIETY
197
were too few in number for the principal components analysis which was called for in the research design. Participants were recruited by posting sign-up sheets for various time periods on a bulletin board on campus. The study was advertised as an “Assessment of Personality” study. The data from four female participants were not included in the analyses because they were more than 24-years-old. This age limit was determined on the basis of the research area under investigation. The resulting sample on which analyses were based consisted of 102 female participants. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 24 years, with a median age of 19 years. Instruments Appearance
anxiety questionnaire
This questionnaire included 32 statements designed to assess anxiety about one’s physical appearance. The questionnaire gave the following instructions to participants: “For each of the items below, indicate to what extent the statement is true or characteristic of you using the following scale, where 0 = never, 1 = sometimes, 2 = often, 3 = very often, and 4 = almost always.” The scale was balanced with respect to statements indicating concern and lack of concern for appearance. Among the statements which expressed concern for appearance were: “I feel nervous about aspects of my physical appearance”; “I get nervous when others comment on my appearance “., “I feel ill at ease if I do not have enough time to make myself look good in the morning”; and “I wish that I was better looking”. Some statements indicating lack of concern for appearance were: “I am comfortable with my appearance”; “I like how I look”; “I feel comfortable with my facial attractiveness”; and “I am confident that others see me as physically appealing.” Cronbach’s alpha for the appearance anxiety questionnaire in this study was 0.85. Because this alpha value is acceptable as evidence of internal consistency reliability, an “appearance anxiety index” was created by summing participants’ scores across the questionnaire items. Higher scores indicated a greater degree of appearance anxiety. Items reflecting lack of concern about appearance were reversed before summing. Social history/lifestyle
questionnaire
This scale was designed to assess experiences from participants’ social histories as well as current lifestyle practices which should be behavioral manifestations of appearance anxiety. It consisted of two sections with different instructions and response formats. The instructions for Section A were as follows: “For each of the items
J. P. R. KEELAN
198
ET AL.
below, please respond using the following scale, where 1 = never, 2 = occasionally, 3 = frequently, 4 = very frequently.” Instructions for Section B were as follows: “For each of the items below, please indicate a response of either Yes or No by marking ‘Y’ for a Yes response or ‘N’ for a No response.” Statements beside which participants gave a numerical response followed the instructions. Both sections of the questionnaire contained statements concerning both social history experiences and present-day behaviors. The primary difference between the two sections was in response format. Please refer to Tables 1 and 2 in the Results section for examples of questionnaire items. Demographic questionnaire A third questionnaire was administered to obtain tion such as the age and sex of participants.
demographic
informa-
Procedure Participants completed the questionnaires in sessions of up to 12 persons in which each person was seated at a separate table. Upon entering the testing room, participants signed a consent form. They were then asked to complete the appearance anxiety questionnaire, the social history/lifestyle questionnaire, and the demographic questionnaire. The order in which the appearance anxiety and social history/lifestyle questionnaires was completed by participants was counterbalanced. No effects of order of questionnaires were obtained in the analyses reported subsequently. After respondents had completed the questionnaires, the purpose of the study was explained to them.
RESULTS
Mean appearance anxiety score for entire sample The mean summated score for all participants on the appearance anxiety index was 57.43. Dividing the mean summated score by the number of scale items yielded a mean item score of 1.8. When viewed in terms of the numerical format of the scale, this mean item score indicated that participants overall reported experiencing appearance anxiety often. Principal Principal
components analysis of social history/lifestyle
components
analyses with varimax
rotation
items
were performed
on
APPEARANCE
Table 1.
199
ANXIETY
Varimax rotated factors for section A items of social history/lifestyle
scale
Factor 1 (social activities
with the other sex) “As an adolescent, I went out with groups of friends from both sexes.” (0.76) “I attended social events such as school dances in high school.” (0.75) “I currently go out with groups of friends from both sexes.” (0.74) “In high school, I participated in social activities on Saturday nights.” (0.71) “I go to parties.” (0.69) “I go dancing.” (0.69) “At high school dances, I was asked to dance by members of the opposite sex.” (0.66) “How often did you date as an adolescent?” (0.60)
Factor 2 (being unconcerned
with checking and adjusting one’s appearance) “I carry a comb or brush with me.” (-0.66) (R) “I look at myself in the mirror to check my appearance.” (-0.65) (R) “I wear makeup.” (-0.61) (R)
Factor 3 (negative
comments about one’s appearance) “Other students made fun of my appearance when I was in elementary school.” (0.73) “Members of the opposite sex made negative comments about my appearance when I was a high school student.” (0.66)
Factor 4 (avoiding
strangers) “At social functions such as parties, I spend my time with people I know already instead of meeting new people.” (0.81) “At social functions such as parties, members of the opposite sex whom I have not met approach me.” (-0.62) (R) “At social functions such as parties, I approach members of the opposite sex whom I have not met.” (-0.60) (R) Values in parentheses are rotated factor loadings. “R” indicates for the item in question before summing to obtain index scores.
reverse
scoring
was performed
both sections of the social history/lifestyle questionnaire to identify sets of items that clustered together. Parallel analysis (Longman, Cota, Holden and Fekken, 1989) was used to determine the number of factors to retain. This technique involves comparing eigenvalues from the actual data set with those from a randomly generated data set in order to specify the number of factors to retain. The factors identified through this procedure were used to define indices for each type of rating. For Section A, four factors resulted, accounting for 41.5% of the overall variance. The percent variance accounted for by Factors 1 to 4 were 18.1, 8.2, 7.6 and 7.6, respectively. Items were included in indices based on a rotated factor loading criterion of 0.60. This criterion was chosen to minimize item overlap from factor to factor in defining indices, while still
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ET
AL.
allowing clear identification and labeling of the factors and the items. The labels for the factors included in each index are listed in Table 1. As Table 1 shows, the factors reflected various reported social experiences from individuals’ pasts along with current behaviors. Factor 1 contained items pointing to engagement in social activities involving members of the other sex. Factor 2 reflected being unconcerned with checking and adjusting one’s appearance. Factor 3 contained items indicative of negative feedback received from others concerning one’s appearance in the past. Factor 4 focused on the tendency to avoid others or to be avoided by others in social situations. Six factors were generated by the aforementioned procedure for Section B, accounting for 48.9% of the total variance. The percent of variance accounted for by Factors 1 to 6 were 8.9, 9.1, 8.0, 6.7, 9.7 and 6.5, respectively. Items were included in indices based on a rotated factor loading criterion of O-58. As with the analysis for Section A, this criterion was chosen to minimize item overlap from factor to factor while still Table 2.
Varimax rotated factors for section B items of social history/lifestyle
scale
Factor 1 (past and present dating)
“I had a date for my high school’s prom (farewell dance).” (0.81)
“I am currently
sex.”
involved
in an exclusive
relationship
with a member
of the opposite
(0.75)
Factor 2 (being displeased
with one’s childhood appearance) “I enjoyed having my picture taken as a child.” (-0.78) (R) “I was happy with my physical appearance as a child.” (-0.58)
(R)
Factor 3 (acting
to improve one’s appearance) “I have changed my hair color.” (0.80) “As an adolescent, I suffered from acne.” (0.67) “I have consulted a dermatologist.” (0.61)
Factor 4 (being pleased with one’s adolescent
appearance) “I was pleased with my physical attractiveness as an adolescent.” “I enjoyed having my picture appear in high-school yearbooks.”
Factor 5 (classmates “I attended “I attended
of both sexes) a high school with both male and female an elementary school with only members
(0.88) (0.73).
on appearance vs. apparel) “Wearing stylish clothes is important to me.” (-0.80) “I wash my hair at least once a day.” (0.61)
students.” (0.77) of the same sex.” (-0.72)
(R)
Factor 6 (focusing
(R)
Values in parentheses are rotated factor loadings. “R” indicates for the item in question before summing to obtain index scores.
reverse
scoring
was performed
APPEARANCE
201
ANXIETY
allowing clear identification and labelling of the factors. The labels for the factors and the items included in each index are listed in Table 2. Factor 1 referred to whether one has dated in the past and in the present. Factor 2 had as its theme dissatisfaction with one’s childhood physical appearance. Factor 3 was comprised of reported actions to improve one’s appearance and circumstances prompting such actions. Factor 4 had as its theme reported satisfaction with one’s adolescent appearance. Factor 5 was reflective of past attendance at coeducational schools. Factor 6 reflected focusing on appearance vs. apparel. Index scores for each participant were obtained by taking the simple, unweighted sum of their scores on items comprising the index. Such indices would be referred to as “factor-based scales” by Kim and Mueller (1978). A “factor-based scale” is constructed by “summing all the variables with substantial loadings and ignoring the remaining variables with minor loadings” (p. 70). In contrast to factor scores, variations in factor loadings are ignored in creating factor-based scales; for factor-based scales, one asks only whether a variable or item loads on a factor or not. Kim and Mueller have characterized factor-based scale construction as reflecting a “conservative stance,” in that the dimensions revealed by factor analysis are taken as being only suggestive and indicating “some clustering in the data and no more” (pp. 71-72). Before summing, score reversals were performed on negatively-loading items. Relationship
of social history/lifestyle
indices to appearance
anxiety
The following factors correlated significantly with appearance anxiety scores: “being displeased with one’s childhood appearance,” ~(92) = 0.40, p < 0.01, “being pleased with one’s adolescent appearance,” ~(92) = -0.23, p < 0.05, “being unconcerned with checking and adjusting one’s appearance,” ~(92) = -0.29, p < 0.01, and “past and present dating,” ~(92) = -0.21, p < 0.05. Two indices were marginally significant in their correlation with the appearance anxiety index: “social activities with the other sex”, ~(92) = -0.18, p < 0.10 and “negative comments about one’s appearance,” ~(92) = O-18, p < 0.10. Relation between social success in each developmental
period and appearance
anxiety in young university women
The previous analyses pointed to several social history experiences which may be related to appearance anxiety in young university women. A remaining issue to be addressed was whether self-reported social success in childhood, adolescence and/or early adulthood is related to appearance anxiety in late adolescent and early adult young university women.
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J. P. R. KEELAN
Table 3.
Mean appearance anxiety scores for university women high and low in social success at three developmental periods
Period Childhood Adolescence Early Adulthood
**
