| The internalization of attractiveness functionality refers to the process in which individuals accept the current social advantage of high attractiveness and incorporate them into their own concept of attractiveness and management behavior.Existing researches mainly focus on the formation and influence of the internalization of ideal appearance with different characteristics.There are few studies on the internalization of attractiveness functionality,and no reliable measurement have been developed.This research presents three studies on the initial development and validation of the Physical Attractiveness as Means to End Scale(Ph AMES).Study 1 is devoted to forming the first version of the questionnaire and exploring the factor structure of the questionnaire.Items of the scale were formed through the literature method and brainstorming method,and after the selection of items and the deletion of expert evaluations,a first-version questionnaire with 10 questions was obtained.750 college students(250 men)filled out the first version of the questionnaire.Through item analysis and exploratory factor analysis,all items of the first version were verified and retained.The exploratory factor analysis extracted two factors:work and love.Each factor contained 5 items,and the factor extraction results were consistent in different gender samples,which was consistent with the existing research conclusions.The reliability of the whole scale and each dimension in each gender group were pretty good.Study 2 recruited a new sample to fill out the first version of the questionnaire and other related questionnaires to further verify the questionnaire’s factor structure,convergent validity,discriminative validity,and gender equivalence of the structure.A total of 500 subjects(200 males)filled out relevant questionnaires.The confirmatory factor analysis results showed that the two-factor structure model fit well,and the factor loading,average variance extraction and composite reliability met the corresponding statistical requirements,indicating that the model had good convergent validity.The correlation coefficient of the two dimensions is less than the square root of average variance extraction,indicating that the construct has good discriminative validity.In the multiple confirmatory factor analysis,all restrictive models grouped by gender were well-fitted and there was no significant difference,indicating that the two-factor structure had gender equivalence.In the correlation analysis,internalization of attractiveness function was positively correlated with other variables related to body image,such as depression,anxiety,stress,negative physical self,eating disorder diagnosis,objectified body consciousness,acceptance of cosmetic surgery,materialism,and body mass index.Internalization of attractiveness function was related to social and cultural pressure,mass media pressure,Asian media appearance comparison,Asian media appearance preference,appearance conversations with friends,physical appearance comparison and other social and cultural variables.Internalization of attractiveness function was not correlated with demographic variables,such as age,gender,parents’ education level,and relationship status.In sum,the results indicated that the questionnaire has good convergence and discriminative validity in general.In study 3,the research hypothesized that appearance functional beliefs might have a positive effect on the acceptance of plastic surgery.Objectified body consciousness might have an intermediary effect in the above relationship.The present study recruited 333 female subjects to fill out relevant questionnaires.The latent variable mediation model showed that the model did not have obvious common method deviations,and the model fit well;appearance functional beliefs positively predicted objectified self-awareness,and objectified self-awareness positively predicted plastic surgery acceptance.The mediation effect was significant,which supported the hypotheses.In summary,the newly developed Ph AMES has a stable factor structure,good internal consistency reliability,and structural validity.It is a reliable tool for measuring the internalization of attractiveness function. |
