Assesment of moderation effect of personality traits on the relationship between body image and social anxiety among adolescents aged between 15-18 years

Purpose: Aim of this research which focuses on the relationship between body image, social anxiety and personal characteristics is measuring the effect of personality traits on the relationship between social anxiety and body image among the adolescents who lives in Turkey and aged between 15-18 years. Method: The study sample consisted of 300 adolescents. In order to evaluate personality structure of participants: Five Factor Personality Inventory, in order to evaluate body perspectives: Body Image Scale and to specify social anxiety levels: Social Anxiety Scale for Teenagers was used. Descriptive statistical methods were used in the evaluation of research data and linear hierarchical regression analysis was performed for the purpose of testing the hypothesis of current esearch. Hypotheses of formative effect between variables were tested. Results: In the first step of this study, body image and social anxiety were identified as the predictor variables and analysed on the mediator effects of the five factor personality inventory sub-dimensions between these two variables. Results indicated that; body image was found to have a significant predictive effect on social anxiety (F (1, 298) = 5.753, p <.05). On the other hand, it was observed that the predictor variable 'Responsibility' is not significant on this relationship just by itself (F (1,297) = 1.053, p> .05). The results were as follows: Compliance (F (1,297) = 21.872, p <.001), emotional balance (F (1,297) = 41.857, p <.001), outwardness (F (1,297) = 30.920, p < F (1,297) = 30.375, p <.001), the predictive effects of the variables were found to be significant at p<.001 level. When examining the common effects on the social anxiety total score of each of the five mediator variables together with the individual body image score, only the mediator effect of responsibility was significant (F (1,296) = 7.582, p <.05). Conclusion As a result of this study, it is observed that there is a mutual relation between personality traits, social anxiety and the body image at some relevant degree. Moreover, results demonstrated that there might be mediator effects of the personality structure on the relationship between social anxiety and body image. When the evaluation of every discovery has been made, since there are few mentions of the relation of personality trait variable with these two factors in literature, it is suggested that future studies should focus on the relation of these two variables.