Investigating The Effect of Correcting Cognitive Bias on Physical Appearance on Desire for Cosmetic Surgery and Students' Self-Esteem.

 The present research was conducted with the aim of investigating the effect of correcting girls' cognitive bias towards physical appearance on their desire for cosmetic surgery and self-esteem. The research method in this study is semi-experimental and using a pre-test and post-test design with a control group. The statistical population of the research included the female students of the non-profit Foulad University of Technology in the academic year 1401, of which 200 were selected using the purposeful sampling method and completed the body image questionnaire. Then, 45 students whose questionnaire scores were above the average were selected and placed in two experimental groups (22 people) and control (23 people) using the random assignment method.The research tools were: Cooper Smith's Self-Esteem Questionnaire, Cosmetic Surgery Tendency Questionnaire, Probe Dot Test. First, a pre-test was taken from both groups, and then 10 sessions of 30 to 40 minutes were held individually for the experimental group (8 sessions to correct cognitive bias and 2 sessions to measure bias and fill in questionnaires). During this time, the control group did not receive any training. After completing the training, a post-test was taken from both groups and the collected data were analyzed by SPSS software.  The findings showed that correcting cognitive bias towards physical appearance reduces cognitive bias towards physical appearance (P<0.01) and decreases desire for cosmetic surgery in student girls (P<0.01); But the effect of correcting cognitive bias towards physical appearance on self-esteem was not observed (P<0.01).  Cognitive bias correction can be used as an effective method. Although the current research is limited in generalizability due to the use of a single-sex sample and targeted sampling, the clear findings based on the effect of cognitive bias correction on reducing cognitive bias towards physical appearance and also reducing the desire for cosmetic surgery. It opens a new perspective regarding the effect of unconscious interventions aimed at correcting cognitive biases on mental health. Cognitive bias correction has more therapeutic effect than group cognitive behavioral therapy, because the effectiveness of cognitive bias correction treatment is probably caused by changing the selective information processing pattern and interpretation biases in the tests, which are based on the models Cognitive are effective in creating and maintaining disorder. Cognitive bias correction method changes biases through more experimental and subtle methods (compared to verbal and more obvious psychotherapy processes).