Predicting Marital Satisfaction based on Social Media and Body Image in Women Who Chose to Have Cosmetic Surgery: The Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation

The study of marital satisfaction and its determining factors has always been of interest to researchers in the fields of Psychology and Social Sciences. The objective of the present study was to predict marital satisfaction based on virtual social networks and body image in women who chose to have cosmetic surgery through the mediation of emotion regulation. The research methods were correlation and path analysis. The statistical population included all women who chose to have rhinoplasty in beauty clinics in districts 1 to 5 of Tehran in 2021. The selection was randomly from the areas of Tehran City. Among them, 150 women were selected through the convenience sampling method. They filled out Olson’s (1998) Marital Satisfaction questionnaire, Mojaradi et al.’s (2014) Social Network questionnaire, Body Image questionnaire (1970), and John and Gross’ (2003) Emotion Regulation questionnaire. Descriptive analysis and path analysis were conducted using SPSS software (version 25) and PLS software (version 3), respectively. The results showed that the direct effects of body image on emotion regulation, emotion regulation on marital satisfaction, a virtual social network on emotion regulation, and a virtual social network on marital satisfaction were significant (p < 0.05). However, the direct effect of body image on marital satisfaction was not significant (p < 0.05). In addition, the indirect effect of body image mediated by emotion regulation on marital satisfaction, and that of virtual social networks mediated by emotion regulation on marital satisfaction of women who chose to have cosmetic surgery were not significant (p < 0.05). According to the findings, it is recommended that family counselors hold emotion regulation training, and teach women who chose to have cosmetic surgery how to manage the use of virtual social networks to promote their marital satisfaction.