Social Physique Anxiety and Body Image
Social Physique Anxiety - The Social Physique Anxiety Questionnaire (SPAS)
The Social Physique Anxiety Questionnaire (SPAS) is a questionnaire that was designed by Hart, Leary and Rejeski in 1989. The SPAS contains statements that reflect on how you feel about the figure of your body, in terms of body fat, muscular tone and general body proportions. The person then gives them a score next to the statement between 1-5, 1 being not characteristic at all, to 5 being extremely characteristic. All the scores are then added up together to a sum total, which is the overall score of the questionnaire. The higher the number is of the questionnaire, it means that that that person has higher levels of social physique anxiety.
According to Hausenblas, Brewer and Van Raalte (2004), "Social Physique Anxiety is the anxiety that people experience when they perceive that other people evaluate their physiques negatively." In other words, social physique anxiety is where people become worried about how other people will think badly about their bodies. It could be that people worry that other people think that they too thin, too fat and so on. If people are unable to perceive themselves as being healthy, physically fit or physically attractive, this can lead to an increase in social physique anxiety.
According to Fleming and Ginis (2004), "exercise self-presentation efficacy has been conceptualized as a person's confidence in his ability to create the public impression of himself being physically fit, coordinated and physically attractive." A method was created to measure a person's level of exercise self-presentation efficacy, known as the self-presentation in exercise questionnaire (SPEQ). This questionnaire was constructed by Conroy, Motl and Hall (1998, 2000). If a high score was given in the SPEQ, this would indicate that the individual has a high level of exercise self-presentation efficacy, and if a person had a low score on the SPEQ, this would show that that person has low level of exercise self-presentation efficacy.
Exercise self-presentation efficacy is heavily linked with social physique anxiety, because depending on how confident somebody is able to perceive themselves has being physically fit and attractive, will determine how much anxiety they have about other people negatively thinking about their bodies. If a person has greater efficacy, it means that that person will have a low level of social physique anxiety, and if they had lower efficacy, it would mean that they will have greater social physique anxiety. The relationship between these two effects can be influenced by the exercise environment. If a person was training in an appearance-focused exercise environment, where there are lots of mirrors, windows, form-fitting clothing and lots of appearance-related comments, this is likely to increase that person's social physique anxiety and lower their exercise-self-presentation efficacy. In contrast, if the exercise environment was more health-focused, where there was privacy, people wearing loose clothing and was health-focused comments, this would decrease a person's social physique anxiety and increase their exercise self-presentation efficacy.
Social physique anxiety is also said to influence the three aspects of the Self-Determination Theory. In summary, self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1991), is the three human needs of competency, autonomy, and relatedness that influences our motivation to exercise. Psychological development can become impaired when social factors, such as social physique anxiety, stops us from feeling satisfaction of those three basic needs. If a person has a high level of social physique anxiety, this can stop them from feeling the satisfaction of the basic human needs, because if they start perceiving that others are thinking negatively about how they look, not only do they feel that they feel less worth in the eyes of others, but they also become very influenced by the environment they are in, but they also feel that they feel they won't be able to achieve the goals that they set themselves. This can therefore decrease their intrinsic motivation, because if the person isn't able to gain any satisfaction from exercising, due to the effects of social physique anxiety, this can make them feel that exercise is pointless because they not feeling good after doing it, which means that their intrinsic motivation for exercise will decline and therefore they will stop participating in exercise.
Body Image: The Multi-Dimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire (MBSRQ)
The MBRSQ is a questionnaire that was developed by Cash (1994). It's a model that is designed to measure how people feel and how satisfied about their health, fitness and appearance. They are given a score for their score for the evaluation and orientation of their health, fitness, appearance and illness. If they are given a high score for each sub scale, it means that they good about their health, fitness and appearance and believe that they are very important. Conversely, a low score means that they don't feel good about their health, fitness and appearance and that they feel they aren't important.
According to Cash (1994), "body image refers to the images or mental pictures that people that about their own bodies." In other words, body image is how people perceive their bodies. They may feel that they are too fat, too thin and so on. Body image can have a massive influence on people's self-esteem and physical self-concept.
Body image trends have been influenced by modern society, as in today's society, people are becoming more accepting of their bodies as more people are becoming more satisfied with their bodies and less people are discriminating other's for their appearance. However, there are some people who still feel dissatisfied with their bodies and are always wanting to improve their bodies, whether it's trying to lose fat or to gain muscle and so on. One of the factors that have influenced body image trends over the years has been through social media and popular culture. Social media has become heavily intertwined with today's society, such as Instagram, Snap-chat, Twitter etc. Lifestyle and fitness coaches are regularly posting on social media on how to accept their body, using ways to help build the body that they want and to help make them more aware of health and fitness. This has increased the trends for both males and females to improve their fitness and muscle tone in moderation. People are seeking to increase their muscle tone, in order for them to achieve greater self-confidence, as well as performance.
According to Morrison, Morrison and Hopkins (2004), "The Drive for Muscularity (DFM) is defined as the desire to achieve an idealized, muscular body type." The DFM is a concept of the ideal body mass and body size. An investigation was taken place, which was reported by Markland and Ingledew (2007), that the ideal body size and the BMI with the prediction of self-determination autonomous motivation. BMI was calculated using a person's body height and weight, and body size discrepancy (BDS) was calculated as the difference between the perceived body size and the ideal body size. The equation used was: BDS = ideal - perceived body size. If the score was positive, this meant that their ideal body size is greater than their perceived body size, meaning that they have a motivation to increase their body size. If the score was negative, this meant that their ideal body size was less than their perceived body size, meaning their motivation is to decrease their body size. A relative autonomy index (RAI) was also calculated from scores that were taken from a BREQ-2. The results from the investigation a showed that greater intrinsic motivation is linked with moderate BMI scores, meaning that their BMI is not too thin or obese, and that their BDS scores are small, where their ideal body size is not greater or less than what they perceived.
In my opinion, a person's body image can have a great impact on a person's psychological well-being. When a person perceives their body image as being positive (meaning they're happy with their body size and body mass), this helps them to become more happy and positive in general because they are not worried about how bad they look and that they are pleased with the body that they have. The more positive that they are about their body image, the more psychologically stable that they will become. Conversely, when a person isn't happy with their body image and they are dissatisfied with the way they look, this can likely lead to negative outcomes. One of the negative outcomes from having a bad body image is that a person can become depressed just by the way they negatively perceive their body. Another outcome is that a person may become motivated to go to a gym or do more fitness. This can be a positive, however it can also have a negative perspective. For instance, if a person was very fit and was in great physical condition but still wasn't satisfied with their body, this could lead to exercise dependence, where whey are have become addicted to exercise and do it excessively that this can lead to many symptoms, such as lack of energy, stress, anger and irritability. People may use other methods, besides from exercising, in order to improve their body. For example, people who want to build muscle mass may use many forms of steroids in order to quickly increase their muscle mass, which is very dangerous to use, or for those who want to lose fat, may cut out fat from their diet or hardly eat at all and consume very little calories, which is also very dangerous for the body.
Bibliography
References
Cash, T., 1994. The Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire User's Manual. Norfolk Virginia: Old Dmoinion University.
Cox, R. H., 2012. Sport Psychology Concepts and Applications. International Edition ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Martin, K.A., 1997. Is the Social Physique Anxiety Scale Really Multidimensional? Conceptual and Statistical Arguments for an Undimensional Model..
Body Image: The Multi-Dimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire (MBSRQ)
The MBRSQ is a questionnaire that was developed by Cash (1994). It's a model that is designed to measure how people feel and how satisfied about their health, fitness and appearance. They are given a score for their score for the evaluation and orientation of their health, fitness, appearance and illness. If they are given a high score for each sub scale, it means that they good about their health, fitness and appearance and believe that they are very important. Conversely, a low score means that they don't feel good about their health, fitness and appearance and that they feel they aren't important.
According to Cash (1994), "body image refers to the images or mental pictures that people that about their own bodies." In other words, body image is how people perceive their bodies. They may feel that they are too fat, too thin and so on. Body image can have a massive influence on people's self-esteem and physical self-concept.
Body image trends have been influenced by modern society, as in today's society, people are becoming more accepting of their bodies as more people are becoming more satisfied with their bodies and less people are discriminating other's for their appearance. However, there are some people who still feel dissatisfied with their bodies and are always wanting to improve their bodies, whether it's trying to lose fat or to gain muscle and so on. One of the factors that have influenced body image trends over the years has been through social media and popular culture. Social media has become heavily intertwined with today's society, such as Instagram, Snap-chat, Twitter etc. Lifestyle and fitness coaches are regularly posting on social media on how to accept their body, using ways to help build the body that they want and to help make them more aware of health and fitness. This has increased the trends for both males and females to improve their fitness and muscle tone in moderation. People are seeking to increase their muscle tone, in order for them to achieve greater self-confidence, as well as performance.
According to Morrison, Morrison and Hopkins (2004), "The Drive for Muscularity (DFM) is defined as the desire to achieve an idealized, muscular body type." The DFM is a concept of the ideal body mass and body size. An investigation was taken place, which was reported by Markland and Ingledew (2007), that the ideal body size and the BMI with the prediction of self-determination autonomous motivation. BMI was calculated using a person's body height and weight, and body size discrepancy (BDS) was calculated as the difference between the perceived body size and the ideal body size. The equation used was: BDS = ideal - perceived body size. If the score was positive, this meant that their ideal body size is greater than their perceived body size, meaning that they have a motivation to increase their body size. If the score was negative, this meant that their ideal body size was less than their perceived body size, meaning their motivation is to decrease their body size. A relative autonomy index (RAI) was also calculated from scores that were taken from a BREQ-2. The results from the investigation a showed that greater intrinsic motivation is linked with moderate BMI scores, meaning that their BMI is not too thin or obese, and that their BDS scores are small, where their ideal body size is not greater or less than what they perceived.
In my opinion, a person's body image can have a great impact on a person's psychological well-being. When a person perceives their body image as being positive (meaning they're happy with their body size and body mass), this helps them to become more happy and positive in general because they are not worried about how bad they look and that they are pleased with the body that they have. The more positive that they are about their body image, the more psychologically stable that they will become. Conversely, when a person isn't happy with their body image and they are dissatisfied with the way they look, this can likely lead to negative outcomes. One of the negative outcomes from having a bad body image is that a person can become depressed just by the way they negatively perceive their body. Another outcome is that a person may become motivated to go to a gym or do more fitness. This can be a positive, however it can also have a negative perspective. For instance, if a person was very fit and was in great physical condition but still wasn't satisfied with their body, this could lead to exercise dependence, where whey are have become addicted to exercise and do it excessively that this can lead to many symptoms, such as lack of energy, stress, anger and irritability. People may use other methods, besides from exercising, in order to improve their body. For example, people who want to build muscle mass may use many forms of steroids in order to quickly increase their muscle mass, which is very dangerous to use, or for those who want to lose fat, may cut out fat from their diet or hardly eat at all and consume very little calories, which is also very dangerous for the body.
Bibliography
References
Cash, T., 1994. The Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire User's Manual. Norfolk Virginia: Old Dmoinion University.
Cox, R. H., 2012. Sport Psychology Concepts and Applications. International Edition ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Martin, K.A., 1997. Is the Social Physique Anxiety Scale Really Multidimensional? Conceptual and Statistical Arguments for an Undimensional Model..
Journal of Sport and Exericse Psychology,
Volume 19, pp. 359-367.
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