The relationship between appearance-related stress and internalizing problems in South Korean adolescent girls

I examined the relationship between appearance-related stress and internalizing problems in adolescent girls in South Korea. A total of 1,320 girls who were beginning Grade 4 (M age = 9.8) were assessed annually for 5 years. I conducted an analysis using a cross-lagged autoregressive model and 5 waves of longitudinal data from the Korea Youth Panel Study carried out by the National Youth Policy Institute (2008), a nationally representative sample of Korean adolescents. Appearance-related stress experienced during Grade 5 was found to cause problems of internalization in Grade 6, and problems of internalization in Grades 6 and 7 was found to induce appearance-related stress in Grades 7 and 8 (M age = 13.8), respectively. The social pressure that young women in South Korea face to maintain a certain type of appearance is discussed in a cultural context.