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AGE-RELATED DYNAMICS OF A PERSONВ’S ASSESSMENTS OF HIS/HER OWN APPEARANCE

Tatyana Shkurko, I. Drozdova, G. Serikov

Abstract

The concept of the dynamic nature of the system of a person's relations (Myasishchev, 1995) [1] and the social-psychological approach to appearance, its assessments and self-assessments (Labunskaya, Drozdova, 2017) [2] served as the methodological preconditions of the study. The goal of the study was studying the age-related dynamics of a person's assessment of the components of his/her appearance and its integral characteristics. Methods of the study: 1) V. Schutz Interpersonal Relations Questionnaire [3]; 2) method “Person's estimate-and-content interpretation of his/her own appearance and its correspondence with gender-and-age related constructs” by V. A. Labunskaya [2]; 3) social-and-demographic questionnaire. 103 persons (57 women and 46 men) at the age from 14 to 60 years were selected as the study empiric object. The participants of the study were divided into 3 subgroups in accordance with their life stage. The first subgroup consisted of 30 persons at the age from 13 to 18 years (adolescent persons); the second subgroup consisted of 43 persons at the age from 19 to 34 years (young persons); the third subgroup consisted of 30 persons at the age from 35 to 60 years (adult persons). The age-related dynamics of a person's assessment of the components of his/her appearance and its integral characteristics was revealed using Kruskal-Wallis test. “Positive progressive” age-related dynamics (significant increase of indices with age) of: 1) a person's assessment of his/her own expressive behavior; 2) the assessments of the correspondence of appearance with gender and gender role; 3) the assessment of the appearance attractiveness for an opposite-sex partner; 4) the assessment of the appearance sexuality was detected. In addition, “negative progressive” age-related dynamics (significant decrease of indices with age) of the assessments of the appearance age-related attractiveness was detected. The carried out gender analysis showed that the detected dynamics is typical, first of all, for women. Men had similar trends, but the dynamics of their indices was statistically insignificant. Additionally, the dependence of a person's assessments of his/her appearance on the expressiveness of his/her social-psychological needs was also detected. The carried out study allowed defining the age-related dynamics of a person's assessment of the components of his/her appearance and its integral characteristics (appearance sexuality, appearance attractiveness for other people) showing that the lowest assessments of their own appearance are typical for adolescent and young persons in comparison with adult persons.

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