Appearance Anxiety and Social Interaction Anxiety among Late Adolescents

The world is developing in a classy manner with a number of standards set for idealizing concepts which influence people globally. A very common discourse of the present time is regarding the appearance of a person. The dressing patterns, presentation styles, cosmetic use, brand preferences and so on have all been in line with the picture of ideal beauty which is being questioned after decades of conditioning. Taking this concern into consideration along with the increased prevalence of social anxiety, the present study has tried to pin point onto the role of appearance anxiety on the very basic social interaction anxiety experienced by common people. The study was conducted on the late adolescent population of Kerala as they are the ones who experience the crisis situation the most in figuring out their own identity. A sample of 90 participants were considered for the study which included an unequal number of males and females and the data collection process was conducted online. The tools used for the study included the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale developed by Mattick and Clarke (1998) and The Appearance Anxiety Inventory developed by Veale et al. (2014). The coded and scored data was statistically analysed to conclude that Appearance Anxiety significantly predicts Appearance Anxiety with no role of gender in any of the variables. The major limitations of the study and the future implications have also been discussed in the article.