The importance of inner and outer body parts attitudes in the self-concept of late adolescents

Abstract

The differential roles of inner and outer body parts attitudes in predicting the self-concepts of late adolescents (107 female and 72 male undergraduates) were assessed in order to test derivations from Erikson's notions (1964) about sex differences in the import of inner and out body “space” for personality. To assess knowledge about inner body space, subjects drew and labeled their internal body parts within an asexual frontal outline figure. Affect associated with internal and external body parts was assessed by rating 36 body characteristics in terms of their importance in making subjects attractive, effective people. Subjects responded also to a short self-concept scale. Females demonstrated greater knowledge of their inner body and attached generally higher levels of importance to their internal (and external) body parts than did males. However, completely opposite to the tested Eriksonian notions, inner body parts attitudes predicted self-concepts for males, but not for females. Moreover, more external than internal body parts were significant predictors of females' self-concepts, and the former parts accounted for more variance in self-concept than the latter ones. The results are interpreted to speak against theories which attempt to dichotomize the source of sex differences in personality development into either biologically or societally based contributions.