The Characteristics And Influential Factors Of Body Image Among High School Students

Body image is the overall individual performance about their own bodies, especially the sense of appearance, thinking, sensibility and behavior. In the West, the research into body image has been more than 50 years, and has formed more systemic theories and more mature scales. However, the research into body image remains ignored in China. Only in past five years, Chinese researchers have introduced the studies of body self, revised foreign scales, and made preliminary study on some fields, just like adolescent physical characteristics, eating disorders and so on. Psychological problems, behavior disorders (such as eating disorders) and diseases (obesity, anorexia nervosa), arising from body dissatisfaction (such as self-abasement, low self-esteem) are very common. As adolescents pay more intention to themselves and are very aware of others' evaluation, body dissatisfactions of young people are very popular. In view of our local cultural background, exploring the characteristics of young people's body image, can not only enrich the body image theories, but also make timely educational intervention measures; it plays a significant and realistic role in taking precautions against disorder behavior. Our study aims at high school students, exploring the body image characteristics of high school students and the relationship between body image and self-esteem, at last, developing a predictive model for the factors which influence body image. The results are the following:1. High school student's body image characteristics: Firstly, on the whole, high school students' body satisfaction is "slightly satisfaction", and the degree of dimension satisfaction from high to low is: appearance feature, sex feature, negative feature, stature feature and sport feature. Secondly, the gender difference in the body satisfaction is significant. The Body dissatisfaction is higher for female than male in collectivity, stature feature and sex feature. Thirdly, body images of high school students differ greatly in different ages: in 17, the body dissatisfaction is the lowest, and the body satisfaction has increased slowly in the latter period of adolescence. Fourthly, the body satisfaction is higher for urban students than rural students in negative feature and collectivity. Fifthly, in addition to sex feature, in collectivity and other features, the body satisfaction is higher for family incoming high students than family incoming low students. Sixthly, the interaction effect of BMI (Body Mass Index) groups and gender in stature feature is significant. The stature satisfaction of partial thin group is lower for male than female, but the stature satisfaction of the normal group and partial fat group are higher for male than female.2. The relationship between high school student's body image and self-esteem: The significant positive correlation was found between body image and self-esteem.The highest correlation coefficient is self-esteem and body image collectivity, from the other features, self-esteem is highest correlation to sport feature, and lowest to negative feature. High-Low self-esteem students have significant differences on scores of appearance feature, sport feature, stature feature and negative feature.3. The influence factors model of body image: The BMI (biological factor) indirectly influence body image through perceived teasing which can both directly influence body image and indirectly influence body image through self-esteem(individual psychological factor). Self-esteem is a partial mediator in this model. Perceived pressure indirectly affect body image, in this model, comparatively speaking, physical appearances fail to affect body image. In this forecasting model, body image is indirectly influenced by biological factor (BMI), and socio-cultural factor (the perceived teasing) has a direct impact on body image and indirect impact on body image through individual psychological factor (self-esteem).