Brescia Psychology Undergraduate Honours Theses

Date of Award

Spring 4-8-2024

Program

Psychology

Supervisor

Richard Shugar

Abstract

Abstract

This study investigates the influences of maladaptive perfectionism on female college students' body image dissatisfaction. Specifically, it looks at how maladaptive perfectionism affects social appearance anxiety and body image cognitive distortions. The sample comprised of 80 female participants from Brescia University College in London, Ontario, Canada. The Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (APS-R) (Slaney et al., 2001) was used to measure participants' maladaptive and adaptive perfectionism scores. The Assessment of Body Image Cognitive Distortion (ABCD) (Cash, 2008) scale was used to measure participants' cognitive distortions about their bodies. The Social Appearance Anxiety Scale (SAAS) (Hart et al., 2008) was used to measure participants' social anxiety. A Pearson correlation analysis examined the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and Social Appearance Anxiety and found a significant positive correlation. A positive correlation was found between maladaptive perfectionism and body image cognitive distortions. A positive correlation was also found between social appearance anxiety and body image cognitive distortions. These findings suggest that higher levels of maladaptive perfectionism are related to higher levels of social appearance anxiety and body image cognitive distortions in female university students.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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