Adverse childhood experiences and body appreciation: The buffering role of posttraumatic growth

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are widely recognized as risk factors for long-term psychological difficulties, including body dissatisfaction. However, the link between ACEs and positive body image, especially body appreciation, remains underexplored worldwide. Posttraumatic growth (PTG) may buffer the impact of ACEs, yet its role with ACEs has rarely been examined. This study investigated the association between ACEs and body appreciation and explored whether PTG moderated this association in a sample of Chinese adult men and women. The study included an online sample of 230 Chinese men and 251 Chinese women who had experienced one or more ACEs. Participants completed validated self-report measures of ACEs, PTG, and body appreciation. Pearson correlation and moderation analyses were performed separately by gender and by ACE subtypes. Results showed that higher levels of ACEs were generally associated with lower body appreciation in men and women, with stronger effects in women. Higher PTG weakened the negative association between ACEs and body appreciation among women, but not men. Subtype analyses indicated that PTG exerted buffering effects across multiple ACE domains among women, even after correction for multiple comparisons, whereas in men, subtype-level interaction effects were not significant. These findings indicate that PTG may act as a buffer of the association between childhood adversity and positive body image, particularly among women. While continued, namely longitudinal, research is needed, findings provide preliminary support for PTG-enhancing strategies to promote women’s body appreciation, whereas interventions for men may need to target specific adversities.