Insatisfação corporal, distress e satisfação sexuais: um modelo de mediação com uma amostra de homens

Abstract

It is known that among the male population, body dissatisfaction has an impact in both social and emotional adjustment. However, the association of body dissatisfaction with the sexual response is not as well-known as the later, and more specifically it is not well known what the possible moderators of this association could be. In the present study, we aimed to provide a contribution for the advance of the field by testing a moderated mediation model for the association between body dissatisfaction, sexual distress and satisfaction. Body appearance cognitive distraction was used as mediator variable and age was used as moderator variable. The present study was an observational, cross-sectional and correlational study, and it used a convenience sample of 597 heterosexual males with a mean of 35.52 years (SD = 8.78), obtained through a web survey. We performed, mediation and moderated mediation analysis, using a path analysis framework via PROCESS Macro v. 3.0 in IBM SPSS v.22. Main findings suggested that cognitive distraction mediated the association between body dissatisfaction and sexual distress, but not between body dissatisfaction and sexual satisfaction. However, when analysing the potential moderating effect of age, results indicated that the mediation effect of cognitive distraction decreases as men get older, reinforcing the idea of age as a protective factor. This study has shown the importance of considering age when body dissatisfaction is evaluated in health contexts and male sexuality researches, which was absent in investigation until now. Future researches with a clinical sample will help enlighten the associations found in this study.

Date of Award	2018
Original language	Portuguese
Supervisor	Patrícia M. Pascoal (Supervisor) & Pedro Joel Mendes Rosa (Supervisor)