Relationship of Social Physique Anxiety to Indicators of Physique

Social physique anxiety (SPA) refers to feelings of anxiety an individual experiences in anticipation or presence of interpersonal evaluation of her/his physique (Hart, Leary, & Rejeski, 1989). Aligned with self-presentation theory (Schlenker & Leary, 1982), SPA is theorized to emanate from the motivation to portray a particular image with regard to physique and the probability of succeeding in a specific context. The matching hypothesis from contextual theory (Lerner, 1985) suggests that negative self-perceptions (SPA) are manifested when individual characteristics are incongruent with contextual demands. Subjectively evaluative contexts of dance and figure skating, which tend to consider changing physical characteristics associated with normal growth and maturation during adolescence as potential liabilities to artistry, may conceivably promote SPA. However, the prevalence of SPA in subjective evaluative contexts is equivocal. For example, SPA has been shown to be prevalent among cheerleaders (Reel & Gill, 1996) and aerobic instructors (Thorgersen-Ntoumanis & Ntoumanis, 2007), while another study found SPA to be higher among figure skaters than soccer players (Martin, Engels, Wirth, & Smith, 1997). In contrast, other researchers have found moderate SPA scores among synchronized skaters (Greenleaf, 2004) and no differences between divers and nonathletic samples (Haase & Prapavessis, 2001; Hausenblas & Mack, 1999). The failure to comprehensively assess and/or consider interindividual biological variation in research designs might explain the findings. SPA tends to vary with physical size so that even extremely thin individuals can be susceptible to SPA. Thus, capturing the magnitude of SPA above and beyond physical size is important before considering more omnibus hypotheses such as those involving maladaptive behaviors (e.g., disordered eating, substance abuse). Surprisingly, systematic assessment and statistical control for physical size is not common practice in SPA research. Among biological parameters, body mass index (BMI; weight/height2; kg/m2) and body weight are considered most often in SPA research (Davison & McCabe, 2006; Diehl, Johnson, Rogers, & Petrie, 1998; Hausenblas & Mack, 1999; Thompson & Chad, 2000); they are generally treated as covariates in analyses to remove the potential effects of body size. Weight by itself is limited; it is difficult to interpret weight independent of height. On the other hand, BMI essentially adjusts weight for variation in height, but it has limitations as an indicator of body composition and, in particular, physique due to major changes in body proportions and composition during adolescence (Malina, Bouchard & Bar-Or, 2004). It is conceivable that adolescents may be unaware of growth that occurred between their most recent measurement and the time of a given study. Accordingly, the accuracy of self-reported height and weight among adolescents is questionable (Himes & Faricy, 2001) and a potential source of measurement error. By definition, the concept of SPA includes the individual’s physical characteristics. Physique refers to body Relationship of Social Physique Anxiety to Indicators of Physique