MODERN FOREIGN RESEARCHES OF BODY IMAGE IN ADOLESCENCE

While Russian researchers are just beginning to study a body image in the context of developmental psychology, Europe, and the USA have a wide experience in such studies. The paper gives the overview of modern foreign publications covering the study of a body image in adolescence by analyzing 25 scientific papers published in 15 English-language journals on the age, clinical and social psychology from 1994 to 2017. The main directions of the experimental research are established. More than a half of the works analyze a body image of adolescents in the gender context. Part of the works covers the description of biological correlates of a body image, in particular, the time of the onset of menarche for girls. The authors identified the specifics of works of recent years in which the problem of influence of the sociocultural factors, such as media, Internet, and social networks, on a body image of adolescents is being actualized. Most of the works of this group describe the “normative dissatisfaction” with a body, typical for people of many samples, including teenagers. The papers also pay attention to the relationships with the significant people – parents, siblings, and peers. The essentially fewer papers consider the age-related variability of a body image. A considerable number of works, especially in the USA (where the African Americans, Hispanics and white teenagers are compared) are focused on the cross-cultural studies of a body image. Some works describe the models where the body image and the behavioral disorders are interrelated and interdependent and tell about the approbation of the programs aimed at the correction of body image of adolescents. As compared with Russian authors, English-speaking authors focus on both the clinical and social and age aspects of studying the body image. Most of the studies were carried out by questionnaire methods; the smaller part is based on the laboratory experiments. Most often, the sample of studies consists of schoolchildren of different ages and sex; in some cases, data from large-scale surveys carried out by such organizations as the World Health Organization are involved.