Poster #130 - Feeling Insecure About Popularity Predicts Future Restrained Eating Through Body Dissatisfaction

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

Physical appearance, or more specifically physical attractiveness, has been remarkedly associated with adolescents’ peer status, popularity in particular. Research shows that attractive peers were rated as significantly more popular than unattractive peers among ninth-graders, regardless of their academic grades (Boyatzis et al., 1998). One important aspect of physical appearance is body image. Low popularity is associated with heavier body shapes for girls and with both thin and heavier body shapes for boys (Wang et al., 2006). The considerable effect of peer environment may pressure adolescents to view body image as a critical factor that impacts their peer status. Indeed, girls nominated as popular by peers are more likely to engage in disordered eating and have lower body esteem (Lieberman et al., 2001). The present study proposed that adolescents’ insecure feelings about their current popularity status among peers, or popularity status insecurity (Li & Wright, 2014), serves as one driving force behind body dissatisfaction, one of the robust risk factors for eating pathology and maladaptive weight-control behaviors in adolescents. Specifically, this study tested a model in which the longitudinal association between popularity status insecurity and restrained eating was mediated by body dissatisfaction and moderated by initial peer-nominated popularity status in a sample of Chinese high-school adolescents.
A total of 233 high school adolescents (138 boys, 95 girls) from an urban public high school in Beijing, China voluntarily participated in the study. Their ages ranged from 15 to 19 years (M = 15.81, SD = .68). Results from path analysis indicated that controlling for Time 1 (T1) restrained eating and gender, T1 body dissatisfaction was positively related to T1 popularity status insecurity (β = .72, p < .001) and Time (T2) restrained eating (β = .17, p < .01). T1 restrained eating significantly predicted T2 restrained eating (β = .48, p < .001). No moderation on any single path was found. However, the longitudinal indirect effect of popularity status insecurity on restrained eating was moderated by T1 popularity, such that it was significant when popularity status was low (B = .17, SE = .07, 95% CI: .06, .32) and medium (B = .12, SE = .05, 95% CI: .04, .23), but not high (B = .07, SE = .07, 95% CI: -.04, .23), indicating that the indirect effects became stronger as popularity decreased. There was no significant direct effect of T1 popularity status insecurity on T2 restrained eating.
The current results indicate that when adolescents feel insecure about their popularity status, as part of the search for an answer to why they are not as popular as they desire, they are likely to feel unsatisfied with their body shape that is believed to negatively contribute to their undesirable popularity status. To our knowledge, this is the first study showing that popularity status insecurity, a peer-status-related, social cognitive factor, undermines future normal eating behaviors. School and teachers should make explicit efforts to foster an accepting and benevolent classroom climate that could serve to curb adolescents’ anxiety and insecurity associated with their popularity status.

Authors

• Mingqi Li, DePaul University
  Presenting Author

• Yan Li, DePaul University