“How Do I Look?”: Exploring Body Shape Concerns, Quality of Life, Sleep, and Mood States across Gender

Description

Vasundhra Verma¹ and Sabeen H. Rizvi² (Amity Institute of Psychology and Allied Sciences, Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh¹ and
Department of Psychology, Gargi College, University of Delhi, Delhi²)

Concerns related to body image are becoming progressively prevalent among young adults, thereby posing substantial risks to their physical and psychological health. The present study explored the influence of body shape concerns on quality of life, sleep quality, and mood states, focusing on gender-specific variations. A cross-sectional design was employed on 601 students (M = 20.4 years). Participants were assessed using the BSQ-8c (Cooper et al., 1987), WHOQOL-BREF (WHOQOL Group, 1998), PSQI (Buysse et al., 1989), and PANAS-GEN (Watson et al., 1988). The findings denoted that gender significantly moderated the relationship between body shape concerns and on few dimensions of quality of life. For males, higher levels of body shape concerns were strongly associated with lower scores in physical health (β = -0.31, p < .001), psychological health (β = -0.32, p = .005), and environmental health (β = -0.30, p < .001). Contrarily, no significant moderation relationships were elicited for females across variables. Thus, body shape concerns are more detrimental to males.