Social relationships are generally thought of as beneficial. However, the present study set out to test the hypothesis that for individuals who perceive others to judge their appearance negatively, daily social interactions can also be a source of stress. Indeed when assessing 38 young adults, we found that both more incidences of negative exchanges reported during the past month as well as perceived negative appearance judgments by others were associated with more self-reported stress. Interestingly, however, for individuals with low attribution body esteem, higher numbers of positive social exchanges during the past month were related to health-relevant changes in biological markers of chronic stress as well. The same was true for individuals with high attribution body esteem who reported to experience only very few positive exchanges. As such, these findings go beyond the initial focus on low body esteem and negative social exchanges and introduce high body esteem as well as daily positive exchanges as potential health risk factors.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 19 December 2025.
All research outputs
#21,055,515
of 31,794,287 outputs
Outputs from Biological Psychology
#1,134
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Outputs of similar age
#173,576
of 291,021 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Biological Psychology
#13
of 30 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 31,794,287 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 32nd percentile – i.e., 32% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,992 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 11.7. This one is in the 42nd percentile – i.e., 42% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 291,021 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 39th percentile – i.e., 39% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 30 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 56% of its contemporaries.
