Adaptation of Objectified Body Consciousness Scale for Youth to Turkish and to Investigate the Mediator Role of Self Objectification In the Relationship Between Social Media Usage and Desire to be Liked

Abstract

Self-objectification refers to the process of self-imposing internalized cultural standards regarding a person's worth comes from his/her physical attractiveness and beauty. In today's popular culture, a growing number of adolescents have problems such as objectification and the related problems such as depression and anxiety disorders. This study has two components. The first part of the study aims to adapt Objectified Body Consciousness-Youth scale developed by Lindberg, Hyde, and McKinley (2006) to Turkish for preadolescent youth. The second part of this study aims to test the assumption that the use of social media with full of objectification cues will be related to self-objectification, and self-objectification in turn will be related to the desire to be liked further since self-objectification requires approval of others to feel confidence. The sample of the study consists of 718 secondary school students in total. The participators of the first part of the study, which is the adaptation phase, were 551 middle school students. The second part was conducted with 164 middle school students. The analyses of the data support the 3-factor structure explaining 59% of the total variance, which was similar to the original scale structure. The internal consistency coefficients of the scale for body surveillance, control belief and body shame subscales were .82, .72 and .81, respectively. Its' relationships with Rosenberg Self-Esteem and Social Appearance Anxiety Scale are meaningful and at the expected direction. Finally, the analysis run in the second part of the study confirmed the mediator role of body surveillance and body shame subscales of self objectification in the relationship of social media usage frequency and desire to be liked.