Embedded Files
having some kind of cosmetic surgery^. Higher scores indicate greater consideration of cosmetic surgery. In the present study, composite scores were created by summing participants’ responses to all 5 questions. Participants were presented with a list of the 5 most popular facial cosmetic procedures that young adult women (18–29 years) are likely to get, and asked to consider how likely they would be to undergo any of those procedures. This list was taken from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons website (see ASPS 2016). As financial expense could potentially be a prohibitive factor, participants were asked to respond as if money was no object. The ACSS has good internal reliability (α = .88), good test-retest reliability (α = .74), and good construct validity (Henderson-King and Henderson-King 2005). For the current sample, Cronbach’s alpha for the ‘Consider’ subscale was α = .93. The scale had evidence of concurrent and construct validity. Finally, participants completed a questionnaire consisting of multiple-choice questions ostensibly intended to measure their recall of the images (e.g., BWhat capital city was pictured in one of the images? Answer options: Cardiff, Dublin, London.^ BWhat colour lipstick was one of the women in the images wearing? Answer options: red, purple, orange^). Given that this filler task mainly served to mask the true aims of the study, answers were not considered in further analyses. Results All statistical analyses were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics 22. We first investigated the effect of condition on the main dependent measure, by testing whether the viewing of women who had undergone cosmetic surgery (vs. control condition) leads participants to have an increased desire for cosmetic surgery. In order to control for the effect of negative mood, depression, anxiety, and age, an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted. Results showed a marginally significant difference between the cosmetically enhanced image condition and the travel image condition, F(1, 88) = 3.67, p = .059, ηp 2 = .04. As such, participants who had viewed images of cosmetically enhanced females showed a tendency for an increased desire for cosmetic surgery (M = 21.16, SD = 9.33) compared to participants who saw images of travel (M = 17.59, SD = 8.96). There were no significant effects of negative mood F(1, 88) = 1.95, p = .166, ηp 2 = .02, depression F(1, 88) = 0.69, p = .409, ηp 2 = .01, or anxiety F(1, 88) = 1.31, p = .255, ηp 2 = .04, on participants’ desire for cosmetic surgery. As such, viewing images of females who had undergone cosmetic enhancement was unaffected by these personal trait variables. To explore the prediction that the desire for cosmetic surgery would be mediated by lower appearance satisfaction due to social media use, we conducted a series of regression analyses following Baron and Kenny’s (1986) approach. As shown in Fig. 1, social media use significantly predicted desire for cosmetic surgery; total effect: t(1) = 3.50, β = 1.55, p = .001, 95% CI [.67, 2.42]. The more participants used social media in their everyday lives, the more likely they were to consider cosmetic surgery. There was also a marginally significant trend for social media use to predict body dissatisfaction, t(1) = −1.95, β = −2.20, p = .053, 95% CI [−4.43, .03]. Additionally, a significant negative relationship between body dissatisfaction and desire for cosmetic surgery was observed, t(1) = −2.49, β = −.092, p = .014, 95% CI [−.16, −.02]. The less satisfied participants were with their appearance, the more likely they were to consider cosmetic surgery. The predictive effect of social media on participants’ desire for cosmetic surgery remained significant when controlling for body dissatisfaction; direct effect: t(2) = 3.13, β = 1.39, p = .002, 95% CI [.51, 2.27]. A bootstrapping analysis following Preacher and Hayes’s (2008) approach (using the PROCESS macro, computed for each 10,000 bootstrapped samples) revealed that the 95% confidence [−.01, .52] interval for the indirect effect (effect size = .16) included zero. A Sobel test was conducted and confirmed that the mediation was non-significant (z = 1.30, p = .193). Hence, body dissatisfaction failed to act as a significant mediator in the model. Finally, we examined whether participants’ social media use and body dissatisfaction moderate the effect of condition (cosmetic, travel) on their desire for cosmetic surgery. For this, Curr Psychol ACSS scores were submitted to a Condition (1 = cosmetic enhancement images, −1 = travel images) x Social Media Use or Body Dissatisfaction regression analysis. Results revealed that only social media use, t(1) = 2.00, β = 3.02, p = .048, 95% CI [.00, .60], but not body dissatisfaction, t(1) = 1.46, β = 0.02, p = .148, 95% CI [−.01, .05], moderated the effect of condition on desire for cosmetic surgery. Analyses conducted separately for each experimental condition showed that social media use, t(2) = 3.48, β = 1.98, p = .001, 95% CI [.84, 3.11] was more predictive of the desire for cosmetic surgery than body dissatisfaction, t(2) = −1.63, β = −.078, p = .108, 95% CI [−.17, .02], for participants in the cosmetic enhancement condition. In comparison, neither social media use, t(2) = .851, β = .592, p = .398, 95% CI [−.80, 1.98], nor body dissatisfaction, t(2) = −1.34, β = −.073, p = .187, 95% CI [−.18, .04], significantly predicted desire for cosmetic surgery for participants in the travel
Google Sites
Report abuse