Investigation of Basic Personality Traits and Social Appearance Anxiety of Individuals Undergoing Aesthetic Surgery Operations: A Descriptive Study

Abstract

Objective: This study was performed with the aim of deter- mining the basic personality traits and social appearance anxiety of indi- viduals undergoing esthetic surgery. Material and Methods: The research examined descriptive and relational features and included individuals un- dergoing esthetic surgical operations from May-September 2021. Sample selection was not performed in the research and the sample included 267 individuals abiding by the inclusion criteria. Data were collected with a de- scriptive information form, social appearance anxiety scale, and basic per- sonality traits scale. The fit of data to normal distribution was assessed with the Shapiro-Wilk analysis. As data abided by normal distribution, the inde- pendent samples t-test and Pearson correlation analyses were used. In order to carry out the study, ethics committee permission from Nev şehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University and consent from the individuals within the scope of the study were obtained. Results: Individuals who were woman, single, em- ployed and having esthetic operations for a nose were determined to have higher social appearance anxiety (p<0.05). There were significant differ- ences identified between gender, marital status and income level with basic personality trait scale points (p<0.05). There were positive high-level cor- relations between the emotional inconsistency and negative values subdi- mensions of the basic personality traits scale with social appearance anxiety level (r: 0.606, 0.642; p<0.05), while there were negative moderate-level correlations between extraversion, openness to experience and adjustment subdimensions with social appearance anxiety levels (r: -0.491, -0.473, - 0.557; p<0.05). Conclusion: Individuals undergoing aesthetic surgery had high social appearance anxiety, there was difference between the subdi- mensions of basic personality traits according to their sociodemographic characteristics, and there was a relationship between basic personality traits and social appearance anxiety.