The importance factor for self-ideal differences in thinness and muscularity for males and females

The present study focused on the assessment of Body Dissatisfaction (BD) in men and women by measuring their reported differences between Self and Ideal (S-I) body in two equivalent scales focused on body size and muscularity. This was done in order to test the widespread notion that females are more affected by the thinness ideal and males by the muscular ideal. The importance that was given to such discrepancies was also measured with the goal of gaining further knowledge on the potential impact of the importance factor on BD. A sample of 216 college students (126 females and 90 males) completed the figure and importance scales and measurements of Drive for Thinness (DT) and Drive for Muscularity (DM). Results revealed that importance given to S-I discrepancies on muscularity and thinness figure scales are highly correlated to DM and DT respectively, independently of the size of the discrepancy. The comparisons between genders showed that women displayed greater DT and S-I discrepancy scores on the body size scale than men, while the latter presented higher DM and muscularity dissatisfaction than the female participants. The findings show that the measurement of S-I discrepancy importance on muscularity and body size figure scales is a promising addition for its potential to predict DM and DT and further supports the idea that body size in women and muscularity in men have the greater impact on BD.