The effect of the sociocultural pressures in the development of body dissatisfaction among adolescent girls: The investigation of mediator role for comparison and internalization of the appearance ideals

  The adolescence is one of the phases that adolescents experience significant physical changes during it, these change can causes the changes in body image especially in girls but body image is a psychological phenomenon that be powerfully affected by sociocultural factors. So, it is necessary to study body image in cultural context. The present study aimed to investigate the role of the sociocultural pressures and mediators mechanisms in the development of dissatisfaction among Iranian Adolescent Girls. A sample of 250 adolescent girls, ages 15 to 18, were selected from Karaj city by using multi-stage cluster random sampling and responded a set of questionnaires including "The Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Scale-4 (SATAQ-4)", "Physical Appearance Comparison Scale-Revised (PACS-R)" and "Body Areas Satisfaction Scale (BASS)". The collected data analyzed using Lisrel and was used path analysis method. The results of the path analysis indicated that the paths of media and peer pressure on internalization had significant coefficients but the path of parent pressure was not significant. Also, the mechanisms of the appearance compare and internalization mediate the relationship of sociocultural pressures and body dissatisfaction. The results indicate sociocultural perspective can predict the development of dissatisfaction among Iranian Adolescent Girls based on sociocultural pressures and their mediator mechanisms.