Explicit physical self and its correlation with their implicit physical self in college students / 中国心理卫生杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the relationship between explicit and implicit physical self among contemporary college students.Methods:A total of 485 college students were recruited,with 264 male students,221 female students,266 junior students,219 senior students,189 students in the urban areas and 296 students in the rural areas.The Adolescents'Physical Self Scale (APS) was used to measure their explicit physical self.The Implicit Association Tests were designed to examine implicit physical self of 50 college students,who were selected from 485 college students by isometric random sampling.Results:The difference were significant among the five dimensions of college students' APS scores (P ＜ 0.001).The average scores of college students' appearance,sexual attractiveness were the highest,while the average score of body flaws was the lowest.Male students scored higher in five APS dimensions than female students (Ps ＜ 0.05).Senior students scored higher in the appearance,movement characteristics,figure and body flaws than junior students (Ps ＜0.05).Students in the urban areas scored higher in the appearance,movement characteristics,figure and body flaws than the students in the rural areas(Ps ＜ 0.05).There was no significant correlation between explicit and implicit physical self (P ＞ 0.05).The scores of relative separation index of movement characteristics were lower in male students than in female students (Z =2.45,P ＜ 0.05).The scores of relative separation index of body flaws were lower in the urban ones than in the rural ones (Z =3.14,P ＜ 0.01).Conclusion:It suggests that separation phenomenon exists between explicit and implicit physical self and the separation phenomena is distinct among the students of different genders or from different areas.