Culture and body image: subcultural variations in coping strategies and their associations with psychological distress among European Canadians and East Asian Canadians
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Whether through friends, family, or social media, it is common to encounter situations that threaten body image. Threats to body image can lead individuals to question or perceive their appearance negatively if not coped with effectively. In turn, a negative body image is often associated with disordered eating patterns. Given the prevalence and severity of eating disorders globally, it is essential to gain insight into body image coping strategies to recognize adaptive ones while identifying those that may exacerbate body image concerns. With the significant cultural and ethnic diversity present in Canada, we investigated how two major ethnic groups cope with threats to their body image. We highlighted the importance of collecting data from underrepresented populations in psychological research and investigating nuanced variations across subgroups in multicultural societies. Participants included European Canadians (n = 156) and East Asian Canadians (n = 157) who rated the extent to which they used certain coping strategies in response to a body image threat. Cultural differences were examined in the usage of three coping strategies: appearance Fixing, Avoidance, and Positive Rational Acceptance. Linear regression analyses were conducted to explore relationships between the coping strategies and symptoms of stress, depression, and social anxiety. Results revealed a main effect of Culture on Appearance Fixing, with European Canadians more likely to endorse this strategy than East Asian Canadians when facing threats to body image. Conversely, East Asian Canadians tended to use Positive Rational Acceptance more than their European Canadian counterparts. In addition, we reported that overall, Appearance Fixing and Avoidance positively predicted symptoms of stress, depression, and social anxiety, and Positive Rational Acceptance emerged as a healthier way to cope, supporting the findings of similar previous works. The implications of culturally grounded research on body image and wellbeing are further discussed.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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".