The Relative Impacts of Sibling Relationships on Adolescent Body Perceptions

The sibling relationship is the longest relationship of the life course and has been found to influence youth adjustment (Dunn, 2002 Dunn, J. (2002). Sibling relationships. In P. K. Smith & C. H. Hart (Eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development (pp. 223–237). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. [Google Scholar]). Given that adolescence is a time of increased body awareness, the authors examined the potential role of siblings’ body conceptions and sibling relationship quality on adolescent body conceptions. In a sample of 101 predominantly White, middle-class adolescent sibling dyads, the authors found that positive sibling relationship quality was associated with higher physical self-worth in adolescents, but that this differed by sibling gender and sibling physical self-worth. Alternatively, negative sibling relationship quality was associated with lower physical self-worth for adolescents, but differed based on birth order, sibling physical self-worth, and adolescent gender.