Low socioeconomic status, strenuous working hours, inadequate diet and nutrition intake, stress, and use of tobacco and alcohol act as contributing factors for ill health and oral diseases. It is a challenging population to the clinician to identify and treat them.
Compared with females, little research on muscularity and the sociocultural influences on this domain has been conducted with males in non-Western societies. The current study explored these sociocultural predictors of drive for muscularity among Malaysian male college students, specifically in terms of ethnicity and exposure to media (i.e., Internet and social media). In total, 166 male college students from two universities in Kuala Lumpur were asked to rate the questionnaires as to muscularity-oriented attitudes and behaviours. Multivariable general linear model analyses revealed that being Chinese was a strong predictor of muscularity-oriented attitudes and behaviours. In addition, modern media, particularly, Internet use and the number of followers on Instagram, was found to significantly predict males' drive for muscularity. Overall findings suggest that males of particular ethnic groups may be at higher risk for negative body image compared to the other ethnic populations and modern media use may accelerate drive for muscularity, which may also in turn place males at higher risk for excess muscularity-oriented thoughts and behaviours.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.