Body satisfaction and self-esteem among middle-aged and older women: the mediating roles of social and temporal comparisons and self-objectification
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objectives: The relationship between body satisfaction and self-esteem among older women is understudied, in particular the potential mechanisms underlying the relationship. The purpose of this study was to investigate social and temporal comparisons and self-objectification, their relationship to body satisfaction and self-esteem, and the extent to which they mediated the relationship between body satisfaction and self-esteem.Method: Women (N = 180) between the ages of 55 and 91 (mean age = 66 years) completed questionnaires assessing body satisfaction, self-esteem, social and temporal comparisons, and self-objectification.Results: Most correlations between body satisfaction, social and temporal comparisons, self-objectification, and self-esteem were highly significant in the expected directions. Upward temporal comparison was used most frequently followed by downward social comparison. Upward temporal comparisons most often targeted the 30 s and 40 s, while social comparisons most often targeted same age peers. Women were more likely to endorse competence-based over appearance-based self-objectification items. Upward and downward social comparison mediated the relationship between body satisfaction and self-esteem, with the strongest indirect effects among younger women.Conclusion: This study highlights the importance of temporal and social comparison in maintaining body satisfaction among middle-aged and older women and their tendency to emphasize competence versus appearance in evaluating their bodies. Results are discussed in the context of developmental and cohort effects that influence body satisfaction among older women.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".