APS Aesthetic Plastic Surgery · 2024

The Desire for Being Liked and the Fear of Negative Evaluation in Rhinoplasty Patients

Albayrak E, Uzdil N, Kökoğlu K.

PubMed 38532202 Publisher (DOI)Free full text (PMC)

What this paper says

In 60 rhinoplasty patients, mean scores for wanting to be liked fell from 19.43 to 12.15 and fear of negative evaluation fell from 27.78 to 17.72 six months after surgery.

Overview

The authors measured two psychological traits before and after rhinoplasty: the desire to be liked by others, and the fear of being judged negatively. The design was quasi-experimental with one group tested before surgery and again at six months. Participants were rhinoplasty patients admitted to an ear, nose and throat service, and data were collected face to face between November 2021 and March 2023.

Sections of note

Design: quasi-experimental one group pretest and posttest study at six months. Level of evidence IV.
60 participants completed the study.
Instruments: a participant information form, the desire for being liked scale, and the brief fear of negative evaluation scale.
Desire for being liked: 19.43 before surgery, standard deviation 7.44, falling to 12.15 afterward, standard deviation 4.76. The difference was highly significant.
Fear of negative evaluation: 27.78 before surgery, standard deviation 9.81, falling to 17.72 afterward, standard deviation 6.91. The difference was highly significant.
The two measures correlated strongly and positively with each other both before and after surgery.
No control group was used, and the abstract reports no p values.

What it means for a patient

Both social anxiety measures dropped substantially six months after surgery, and they moved together.
Without a control group, the change cannot be separated from the passage of time, from having received attention and care, or from expecting to feel better.
Six months is early for a nose to have settled, so the psychological change was measured before the physical result was final.
The scales measure social concern in general, not satisfaction with the nose.

Why this paper matters

Rhinoplasty is often sought for social reasons rather than physical ones, and whether it changes how people feel in social situations is rarely measured directly. Using validated social anxiety scales rather than satisfaction questionnaires addresses that. The single group design means the finding is suggestive rather than causal.

Terms

Desire for being liked: how strongly a person wants approval from others.
Fear of negative evaluation: anxiety about being judged unfavorably by others.
Quasi-experimental: a study with an intervention but without random assignment or a control group.
Pretest-posttest design: measuring the same people before and after an intervention.
Standard deviation: a measure of how spread out a set of values is.

Summary written by rhinoplasty.cc from the abstract, 2026-09-09; not medical advice. The authors' own abstract follows.

Abstract

Objective: The study was conducted to determine patients' desire for being liked and the fear of negative evaluation before and after surgery.

Materials And Method: The study was conducted quasi-experimentally using a one-group pretest-posttest (sixth month) design. The study population consisted of rhinoplasty patients hospitalized in the ear, nose, and throat service. The study was completed with 60 people. Participant information form, the desire for being liked scale, and the brief fear of negative evaluation scale were used as data collection tools. The data of the study were collected face-to-face between November 15, 2021, and March 15, 2023.

Findings: It was determined that the mean scores of the desire for being liked were 19.43 ± 7.44 in the pretest and 12.15 ± 4.76 in the posttest, and the difference between the measurements was highly significant. Furthermore, it was determined that the mean score of fear of negative evaluation was 27.78 ± 9.81 in the pretest and 17.72 ± 6.91 in the posttest, and the difference between the measurements was highly significant. It was observed that there was a high, statistically significant, and positive relationship between the pretest and posttest fear of negative evaluation and desire for being liked scores.

Conclusion: Patients' desire for being liked and fear of negative evaluation, which were high before surgery, decreased significantly six months after surgery.

Level Of Evidence Iv: This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these evidence-based medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of contents or the online instructions to authors www.springer.com/00266 .

Abstract as indexed by PubMed; the article is open access (PubMed Central).