Body Image in Emerging Adulthood: The Role of Attachment and Social Appearance Anxiety

Aim of current study is to reveal the predictive power of attachment styles and social appearance anxiety on body image coping strategies through emerging adulthood. For this purpose 345 university students -181 of them female- were chosen in their period of emerging adulthood. Hierarchical regression analysis was used analyzing the data which was found to be suitable for hierarchical regression via pre-analysis. Results indicated significant correlational associations among attachment styles, social appearance anxiety levels and body image coping strategies of university students. Regarding hierarchical regression analysis results demographic variables such as gender and age had no contribution to the model whereas attachment styles had a significant contribution in second step. In the third step, social appearance anxiety scores were put into the model and had significant contribution to the body image coping strategies. Results revealed that, attachment styles are significant predictors of appearance fixing and avoidance strategies whereas social appearance anxiety is significant predictor of all body image coping strategies (appearance fixing, avoidance and positive rational acceptance).