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Body-Esteem Scale

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Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences
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Definition

The Body-Esteem Scale – Revised is a 28-item gender-specific multidimensional measure of body esteem for women (sexual attractiveness, weight concern, physical condition) and men (sexual attractiveness, upper body strength, physical condition). Respondents rate specific body parts and functions using a five-point Likert scale (“strong negative feelings” to “strong positive feelings”).

Introduction

Body esteem, an important dimension of self-esteem, refers to self-evaluations of the body. Formal body-esteem research has been conducted for over 75 years, but prior to the mid-1980s researchers had assumed that body esteem was both unidimensional and identical for women and men. Yet when Franzoi and Shields (1984) investigated Secord and Jourard’s (1953) Body-Cathexis Scale (BCS) using principal components analyses (PCAs), they found clear evidence that body esteem was not unidimensional nor were the multiple factors similar for women and men. In other words, these findings...

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References

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Correspondence to Stephen Franzoi .

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Franzoi, S. (2020). Body-Esteem Scale. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_8

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