A Research On The Relationship Between Self-objectification And Appearance Anxious In Female College Students

Objectification theory(Fredrickson, Roberts, 1997) argues that sexual objectification experiences bring women internalizing other’s perspective to look at their body, evaluating themselves as sex objects, which process is identified as self-objectification. Self-objectification brings about a series of negative psychological consequences, and causes some physical or mental symptoms. Appearance, anxiety is one of the negative effects of self-objectification. The study of self-objectification is at the preliminary stage in our country. Commonly used self-objectification measurement tools include the Self-Objectification Questionnaire, the Body Surveillance subscale,etc..Appearance anxiety is a kind of social evaluation anxiety toward physical appearance. The attention to appearance and negative expectations may form the appearance anxiety. Appearance of anxiety will bring a series of negative effects on the individual’s physical and mental health.Commonly used appearance anxiety measurement tools include the Social Physique Anxiety Scale,the Physical Appearance State and Trait Anxiety Scale, the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale, etc..Trait anxiety refers to the individual’s relatively stable characteristics of anxiety tendency.Person with high trait anxiety tende to have high anxious arousal level, be easy to create a higher degree of anxiety mood, pay more attention to threat information. Trait anxiety is likely to be an predictor of individual’s appearance anxiety.Psychological security means individuals’ preview for possible danger or risk of physical or mental feelings, and individuals strong or weak response to these threats.It mainly includes two factors—certainty and feelings of control. Psychological security is an important basis of positive personality development, being an important standard of mental health, having important influenceon the individual subjective well-being. Commonly used psychological security measurement tools include the Security-Insecurity Questionnaire and the Security Questionnaire.On the basis of the existing literature, we carried out the following three researches.Research 1, we revised the Self-Objectification Questionnaire. Surveies found the important physical characteristics of women listed in the Noll and Fredrickson’s(1998) Self-Objectification Questionnaire are very different with the physical characteristics which Chinese women care about.Thus, this research attempts to revise the Self-Objectification Questionnaire. Revised programs are as follows. Using importance as an index, preliminary screening 14 important body characteristics;using the degree of differentiation as the index, further choosing 10 body characteristics; new revision of the ten characteristics sorting mission reliability, validity and differentiation. Results show that the newly revised Self-Objectification Questionnaire has good reliability and validity and differentiation.Research 2, probe the trait anxiety’s moderating effect in the relationship between self-objectification and appearance anxiety. Because self-objectification and trait anxiety can affect appearance anxiety, so trait anxiety may moderate the relationship between self-objectification and appearance anxiety. The results showed that, self-objectification, appearance anxiety and trait anxiety are significantly positive correlated; trait anxiety has moderating effect in the relationship between self-objectification and appearance anxiety.Research 3, probe the psychological sense of security’s mediation effect in the relationship between self-objectification and appearance anxiety. Because self-objectification affects person’s psychological sense of security, and the lack of psychological security is the important causion of anxiety appearance, so psychological sense may mediate the relationship between self-objectification and appearance anxiety. With Bootstrapping method for inspection mediation effect model, the results showed that, self-objectification exists significant positive correlation with self-objectification, and both of them exist significant negative correlation with the psychological sense of security; the psychological sense of security has partial mediating effect in the relationship between self-objectification and appearance anxiety.This study revised a satisfizing Self-Objectification Questionnaire, exploring the role of trait anxiety and psychological sense of security in the relationship between self-objectification and appearance anxiety. This research may have certain reference values for the follow-up related researches. Some aspects including research methods and theoretical discussion need to be further enriched and improved.