Open Access 950 Competitive Orientations and Men’s Acceptance of Cosmetic Surgery

Copyright © 2013 Bill Thornton et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In accordance of the Creative Commons Attribution License all Copyrights © 2013 are reserved for SCIRP and the owner of the intellectual property Bill Thornton et al. All Copyright © 2013 are guarded by law and by SCIRP as a guardian. As with women, men are experiencing increased pressure to achieve media-conveyed societal ideals for appearance and their consideration of cosmetic surgery as a means to enhance their appearance for com-petitive advantage in social and career realms has been increasing. This study considered individual dif-ferences in competitive orientations and the acceptance of cosmetic surgery among men. Hypercompeti-tiveness (psychologically unhealthy) was predictive of acceptance of cosmetic surgery even after age, self-esteem, body mass index, and body dysmorphia were taken into account. Personal development competitiveness (psychologically healthy) was negatively associated with body dysmorphia and was not predictive of acceptance of cosmetic surgery among men. These results for men, along with previous re-search among women (Thornton et al., 2013), indicate that a hypercompetitive orientation contributes to the consideration of cosmetic surgery independent of body image concerns for both men and women