Original Article
Prevalence of tattooing and body piercing in Germany and perception of health, mental disorders, and sensation seeking among tattooed and body-pierced individuals

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2005.09.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective

The objective of this study was to obtain data on the incidence and relationship of psychological factors to tattooing and body piercing from a large and representative sample of German citizens (N=2043).

Methodology

Representative data (sample age range=14–93 years) were evaluated with respect to health-related quality of life (SF-36), mental health (General Health Questionnaire), mental disorders (Patient Health Questionnaire), and sensation seeking (Arnett Inventory of Sensation Seeking).

Results

The prevalence of tattooing and that of body piercing in the general German population are 8.5% and 6.5%, respectively. Individuals aged between 14 and 24 years display the highest rate of body piercings or tattoos (females, 41%; males, 27%). Within the group of individuals aged between 14 and 44 years, unemployment and nonaffiliation to a church are positively correlated, tattooing is significantly correlated with the perception of reduced mental health, and both tattooing and body piercing are correlated with significantly increased sensation-seeking behavior.

Conclusions

Next to being motivated by fashion and the urge to fit in with one's peers, the major reasons for body modification practices in the German population appear to be negatively perceived conditions of life, reduced social integration, and increased sensation-seeking behavior.

Section snippets

Introduction: surveys on tattooing and body piercing

Body piercing is defined as “a penetration of jewelry into openings made in such body areas as eyebrows, ears, lips, tongue, nose, navel, nipples, and genitals” [1], [2]; piercing of the earlobes is deliberately excluded from this definition. Tattooing, on the other hand, is defined as “an invasive procedure in which pigment is introduced into the skin by multiple punctures to produce an indelible decorative design” [3]. Both are contemporary practices intended to create a lasting body

Study participants

This study is based on a representative survey of the German population recruiting a total of 2043 respondents aged between 14 and 93 years. Data were collected during the annual survey of the University of Leipzig Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology on health behavior and health perception by the USUMA-Berlin (Independent Service for Surveys, Methods, and Analyses) based on 210 sample points in Germany. Households and the target person in each household were selected with

Prevalence of tattooing and body piercing in the German population

Of the 2043 sampled subjects, 8.5% were tattooed and 6.8% were body pierced. Looking into the relevant sample of respondents aged between 14 and 44 years, the prevalence of tattooing was 15% and that of body piercing was 14%. There was no significant difference in mean age between the tattooed and nontattooed respondents (32 vs. 30 years). Both groups were roughly as often in a partnership (51% vs. 48%). Body-pierced respondents, however, were significantly younger in mean age (26 years) and

Prevalence

The prevalence of tattooing and especially body piercing is particularly pronounced in individuals aged between 14 and 24 years (38% of the female respondents were body pierced; 22% of the male respondents were tattooed). One reason for this is the recency of the fashion-motivated phenomenon that may be triggered by the urge to fit in with one's peers.

Sensation-seeking behavior

The “recency factor” could also account for the finding that sensation-seeking behavior is significantly higher among the body-modified subjects

Acknowledgments

Besides being financed through the regular household budgets of the University of Leipzig, there was no additional outside funding.

We thank Peter van Ham, Pat Agre, and Wolf Singer for their valuable comments on the manuscript and Irmi Pipacs for editorial assistance.

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