The relationship between social comparison and social appearance anxiety from an evolutionary psychology perspective

Social appearance anxiety has been widely studied as an important factor affecting today’s youth. Severe appearance anxiety is highly likely to develop into Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), which can have a very important impact on people’s physical and mental health. In this context, it is particularly important to trace the motivation behind people’s appearance anxiety. Our research aims to investigate the relationship between people who spend more time browsing through pictures on Instagram with a higher tendency to develop social appearance anxiety and to understand the motivation for social appearance anxiety in the context of evolutionary psychology, specifically due to their desire to improve their chances of mating. The study will use the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale (SAAS) to measure levels of social anxiety related to perceived appearance in social contexts, and the survey will categorize whether participants spend more time on social media or post more on social media. Our expected results of the study are that participants who spend more time browsing social media will score higher on the SAAS scale. We will discuss various possible outcomes, with the expected result being that people with a higher propensity for social comparison are prone to social appearance anxiety.