Self-compassion played a partial mediating role between appearance anxiety and social anxiety.Ĭonclusion: Individuals with high appearance anxiety are also at higher risk of social anxiety, but self-compassion can buffer against this relationship. Result: Overall, appearance anxiety was positively associated with social anxiety, and self-compassion could mediate the effect of appearance anxiety on social anxiety. A structural equation model (SEM) was run to examine the mediating effect of self-compassion on the relationship between appearance anxiety and social anxiety. The Self-Compassion Scale-Short Form was used to measure self-compassion.

The Social Anxiety subscale of the Self-Consciousness Scale was used to measure social anxiety. The Appearance Anxiety Scale-Brief Version was used to measure appearance anxiety.

A total of 63 Universities in the province participated in this study, totaling 96,218 participants, of which 40,065 were males (41.64%) and 56,153 females (58.36%), the mean age of the sample was 19.59 (☑.74). Method: The study was cross-sectional and conducted online from October 2021 to November 2021 in Jilin Province, China. Therefore, the aims of this study were to research the effect of appearance anxiety and social anxiety, then to examine whether self-compassion has a protective effect on social anxiety. With the increase of prevalence of appearance anxiety and social anxiety in this age group, it is necessary to explore factors that can buffer against the symptoms of these disorders.

9School of Public Health, Jilin University, Changchun, Chinaīackground: Previous studies have focused on the comorbidity of appearance anxiety and social anxiety, but few studies have focused on the protective role of self-compassion as underlying this mechanism, in young people like University students.

8Division of Psychology, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom.

7China Center for Aging Studies and Social-Economic Development, Jilin University, Changchun, China.

6Department of Population, Resources and Environment, Northeast Asian Studies College, Jilin University, Changchun, China.

5Northeast Asian Research Center, Jilin University, Changchun, China.

4Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.

3Mental Health Center, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China.

2School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China.

1Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, China.

Jie Gao 1,2 † Yi Feng 3,4 † Shicun Xu 5,6,7 * † Amanda Wilson 8 Hui Li 9 Xiaofeng Wang 5 Xi Sun 6 Yuanyuan Wang 1,2 *

To be focused on personal appearance