Attitude to appearance, its value and significance as factors of subjective well-being of young people

Abstract

In the article on the basis of theoretical analysis of foreign and domestic research linkages between the attitude to his appearance (AP) and assessments of well-being develops a differentiated approach to the definition of the influence of different of components attitude to appearance, its value and importance to the assessment of subjective well-being (SW-B). In the empirical part of the research from intercom hypothesis: young people with different levels of subjective well-being may differ self-estimations of appearance, concern them satisfaction, measures importance of appearance in different spheres of life, measures its impact on happiness, estimates of the value of appearance. The study involved young people — 86 people at the age of 17—25 years (M age = 20.07; SD age = 2.232), 50% — women and 50% — men. A set of research methods included: questionnaire “Content-Evaluative Interpretation of Appearance” (V.A. Labunskaya); questionnaire “Estimates of the importance of attractive appear¬ance to improve in different life situation” (V.A. Labunskaya, G.V. Serikov); The modified version of the inventory “Diagnostics of Real Structure of Personality Value Orientations” (S.S Bubnova), includes scale “value of appearance”; questionnaire “Attitudes towards Appearance: Satisfaction and Concern (V.A. Labunskaya, E.V. Kapitanova); the scale of the “subjective well-being”, russian version of which was created by V.M. Sokolova. The results of the study confirm the initiative of hypothesis and indicate what components of attitudes towards appearance have a different impact on the level of subjective well-being: 1) self-estimation of components and characteristics of appearance, associated with satisfaction appearance, increases the level of subjective well-being; 2) increase of value, significance of the appearance of a person’s life, coupled with concern with appearance, leads to reduced levels of subjective well-being.