The Role of Friends and Peers in Adolescent Body Dissatisfaction: A Review and Critique of 15 Years of Research

By Haley J. Webb, M. Zimmer‐Gembeck. 2014

135 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We review the research conducted in the past 15 years concerned with the role of friends and peers in adolescent body dissatisfaction. A number of friend and peer group characteristics have been associated with heightened body dissatisfaction both concurrently and longitudinally. Most widely studied and more consistently linked to body dissatisfaction are appearance teasing and perceived pressure from friends to be thin. Other interactions between friends and peers that communicate and strengthen appearance ideals and direct attention to appearance also have been associated with body dissatisfaction, including appearance-related conversations, friends' modeling of dieting behavior, and perceptions of friends' appearance-related attitudes. Finally, the research is critiqued, new directions considered, and strategies are proposed that could be implemented to reduce body dissatisfaction.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Pharmacy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3f0e116e3b047b902631b983b2d77f35cb9089c7

Citations in the corpus

• Weight status and body image perceptions in adolescents: current perspectives (2015, unknown): “In their systematic review, Webb and Zimmer-Gembeck 15 found that friends and peers influence adolescent body dissatisfaction through various mechanisms, including appearance-based teasing and criticism, modeling and discussing appearance concerns, making appearance comparisons, judging the appearan”