EveryBODY Should Succeed: The Relationship Amongst Students’ Body Appreciation, Academic Interference, and Achievement Emotions

• Author / Creator

  Chazan, Devon

• Despite the continuously narrowing body ideals and corresponding body dissatisfaction in young adults today, limited attention has been given to examining the impacts of students’ body image in their school environment. Body preoccupations, such as a fixation on appearance, food, and exercise, can cause disruptions to academic functioning, known as academic interference. Expanding on previously studied negative associations between body perception and school grades, the purpose of this study was to measure how university students’ attitudes about their bodies, specifically their body appreciation, influence their achievement emotions. We used the notion of academic interference as a type of control appraisal within Pekrun’s Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions. With a quantitative correlational survey design, we collected data from 295 university students. To answer our research questions, we used descriptive and correlational data, and linear regressions with mediation analyses. Results of this study suggest that: both men and women students experience body dissatisfaction, levels of body appreciation and academic interference contribute to the types of achievement emotions experienced in relation to the classroom, and academic interference partially mediates the relationship between body appreciation and emotions. The results are discussed in terms of implications for both researchers and educators.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • academic interference
  • body dissatisfaction
  • achievement emotions
  • university students
  • body image
  • body appreciation
  • control-value theory

• Graduation date

  Fall 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Education

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-445b-8z05

• License

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