Coping with Social Physique Anxiety in Adolescence

Abstract

Purpose To explore how adolescents cope with social physique anxiety. Methods Participants were 398 female (mean age of 15.4 years, SD = 1.3) and 223 male (mean age of 15.4 years, SD = 1.1) adolescents who provided open-ended responses to a self-identified situation in which they experienced social physique anxiety. A codebook of 24 dimensions was developed to code participants’ coping strategies. Measures of state and trait social physique anxiety and coping function were also completed. Results Females had significantly higher mean values than males on social physique anxiety scales and emotion-focused coping function. Females reported a total of 1051 strategies and males reported 473 coping strategies. The most commonly reported coping strategies were behavioral avoidance (reported by 41.5% of females and 33.2% of males), appearance management (39.9% females, 24.4% males), social support (22.1% females, 17.1% males), cognitive avoidance (20.4% females, 18.7% males), and acceptance (19.6% females, 29.0% males). Social physique anxiety in the self-identified situation was related to both trait social physique anxiety ( r = .44, females; r = .36, males) and the number of strategies reported ( r = .21, females; r = .23, males). Conclusions First, this study provides important insight into the wide range of cognitive and behavioral coping strategies adolescents use to manage social physique anxiety. Second, the development of the codebook that was necessary to code the adolescents’ open-ended coping responses has the potential to act as a starting point as a taxonomy for coping in the body domain.