Social risk elicits an internal struggle between wanting to form significant relationships (i.e., connectedness goals) and avoiding rejection (i.e., self-protection goals). The current research tested an intervention designed to reduce perceptions of risk for low self-esteem individuals (LSEs). However, the intervention did not function as anticipated and regardless of self-esteem level, participants reported lower perceived acceptance and lower state self-esteem in the intervention condition compared to the control. In a post-session two weeks following the manipulation, high self-esteem individuals (HSEs) in the intervention appear to not only recover, but actually reported significantly more perceived regard and global self-esteem than HSEs in the control. A second study investigated the impact of the intervention in light of these surprising findings. Results suggest that viewing the intervention video in a socially risky situation caused both HSEs and LSEs to experience social threat. In contrast, the control video actually served to reduce social risk.

Relatively little is known about the relation between body image satisfaction and self-esteem to academic behaviour in pre-adolescent and adolescent girls and boys. The current study is guided by three research questions. The first question is to examine how does body image satisfaction and self-esteem relate individually and collectively with academic behavior? The second question is to examine how much do the relationships between body image satisfaction, self-esteem and academic behavior differ across grades 7, 8, and 9? The third question is to examine how much do the relationships between body image satisfaction, self-esteem and academic behavior differ across genders? A correlational research design is adopted for this study. The data is analyzed using multiple regressions to examine various relations. This study analyzed secondary data gathered from 161 girls and boys from a junior high school in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada as part of the school plan for the 2011 - 2012 academic year. Self-esteem had high positive correlation to academic behavior for both girls and boys across grades 7 - 9. Other highlight was that only for grade 9; body image satisfaction had a low positive correlation to academic behaviour.

Bakgrund: Barnfetma är på väg att bli ett stort folkhälsoproblem i samhället. 42 miljoner barn under fem år är överviktiga i världen. God självkänsla är viktigt för det psykiska välbefinnandet. Syfte: Vi vill undersöka om en överviktig ungdom löper större risk att drabbas av låg självkänsla jämfört med en normalviktig ungdom. Metod: Vi har gjort en litteraturstudie där vi har analyserat tio vetenskapliga artiklar. Resultat: Övervikt och fetma är ett stort problem med negativ påverkan på ungdomars psykiska hälsa. Skillnader finns mellan kön, etnicitet och socioekonomisk bakgrund. Flickor rapporterar lägre självkänsla än pojkar och ungdomar med afroamerikansk etnicitet rapporterar högre självkänsla än ungdomar från andra etniciteter. Slutsats: Övervikt och fetma har ett tydligt samband med låg självkänsla hos ungdomar, speciellt tydligt hos flickor. Därför är det viktigt att börja med insatser i tidig ålder för att motverka övervikt. / Background: Childhood obesity is becoming a major public health issue in the community. 42 million children under the age of five are overweight globally. Good self-esteem is important for mental well-being. Aim: We wanted to investigate if overweight youths were more likely to develop low self-esteem compared with normal weight youths. Method: We did a literature study where we analyzed ten scientific articles. Results: Overweight and obesity is a major problem with a negative impact on adolescent’s mental health. There is a difference between gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic background found in these studies. Girls report lower self-esteem compared to boys and young African-American report higher self-esteem compared to adolescents from other ethnicities. Conclusion: Overweight and obesity is clearly associated with low self-esteem in adolescents, especially evident in female gender. Therefore, it is important to start with interventions at an early age to prevent the problem of obesity.

No description available.

Subjektivt välbefinnande handlar om människors upplevelser av sitt eget liv, enligt deras egen subjektiva värdering av sitt liv. Studiens primära syfte var att undersöka sambandet mellan självkänsla, stress och subjektivt välbefinnande hos svenska högskolestudenter. Könsskillnader, nedlagd studietid och åldersskillnader undersöktes även i relation till subjektivt välbefinnande. Syftet undersöktes utifrån fem hypoteser och en frågeställning. Totalt delades 139 enkäter ut till studenter vid en mellanstor högskola i mellersta Sverige. Skalorna som användes var WHO-10, PSS-10 och Rosenbergs test of Self-Esteem. Analysmetoderna som användes var t-test, korrelationsanalys och en multipel hierarkisk regressionsanalys. Resultaten visar att stress och självkänsla har ett statistiskt signifikant samband till subjektivt välbefinnande. Resultatet stöds av tidigare studier, som undersökt stress och självkänsla som prediktorer för subjektivt välbefinnande. Inga könsskillnader gällande subjektivt välbefinnande hittades. Att minska stress och höja självkänsla bland studenter, kan antas bidra till bättre hälsa och akademiska prestationer.

The two studies reported in this thesis examine the influence of two depressive personality styles, dependency and self-criticism, on how individuals respond to potentially disruptive events, such as a change in or threat to social rank. The studies used an experimental protocol in which participants were allowed to believe firstly that they outperformed a close friend or were outperformed by a close friend and secondly that friends generally agreed or disagreed with them. Findings offer support for the integration of depressive personality styles and interpersonal factors within a social rank framework. Results from the two studies suggest that dependency and self-criticism (a) moderate the impact of interpersonal events, (b) influence how individuals behave towards close friends, (c) affect how individuals remember interpersonal interactions with others, and (d) moderate the manner in which individuals actively structure their social environments. Depressive personality styles may contribute to maladaptive environments and depressive processes in complex ways by influencing the types of strategies individuals adopt to deal with threats to interpersonal relatedness and self-definition.

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

Intergroup discrimination is a pervasive fact of life and many factors are proposed to contribute or relate to its existence and expression (e.g. Staub, 2001). Though much research in social psychology has focused on the need for positive self-esteem as an underlying motive, in the past 25 years, evidence for the role of self-esteem in intergroup discrimination has at best proved contradictory (see Long & Spears, 1997; Rubin & Hewstone, 1998). More recently, other motivational constructs for human behaviour have been proposed to play a part in intergroup discrimination (e.g. Abrams & Hogg, 2001). This thesis focuses on the need to belong (or belongingness) as this has long been recognised as a basic human need (e.g. Horney, 1945) and recently, evidence has been provided to support this assumption (e.g. Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Thus the present thesis argues that as a fundamental need, the need to belong (NTB) would be expected to play a role in intergroup discrimination. In support of this assumption, results from some empirical studies are also highly suggestive of a link between intergroup discrimination and the NTB (e.g. Marques & Paez, 1994), though the current research programme is the first to explicitly examine this link. Seven experiments employing the same basic methodology were conducted to investigate the central hypothesis that engaging in intergroup discrimination decreases the NTB. Three experiments supported the hypothesis. Experiments 2 and 3 found that the NTB decreased for New Zealanders who engaged in intergroup discrimination and Experiment 7 found that members of a minimally socially important group showed a decrease in the NTB following intergroup discrimination when measured at a group level, but not at the personal level. Experiment 1 (Chapter 5) investigated the central hypothesis utilizing the minimal group paradigm (MGP). Despite participants exhibiting intergroup discrimination when given the opportunity, there was no significant change in their reported NTB. Thus the results of this experiment did not support the central hypothesis. Experiment 2 (Chapter 6) investigated whether the central hypothesis would be supported if participants were members of a realistic and meaningful social group category (i.e. New Zealanders). Results from this experiment showed that those participants who exhibited intergroup discrimination did in fact show a significant decrease in their NTB. Experiment 3 (Chapter 7) sought to replicate these results and to control for self-esteem effects utilizing New Zealand participants. Again, results supported the central hypothesis and no effect was found for either global or collective self-esteem. To test whether this result would generalize to other social categories, Experiment 4 (Chapter 8) tested whether the NTB would be decreased after women participants engaged in intergroup discrimination. Results found there was no significant difference in the NTB between women who engaged in discrimination and those who did not. Thus the central hypothesis and the results from Experiment 2 and 3 were not supported. To then investigate whether social influence accounted for the contradictory results from Experiments 1-4, Experiment 5 (Chapter 9) required women to publicly or privately state their intergroup discrimination. No significant changes were found in the NTB (from pre- to post- allocation task) for either private or public responding conditions, whether women engaged in intergroup discrimination or not. It was then assessed whether the importance to participants of the social identity in question was a factor. Experiments 6a and 6b (Chapter 10; women and men respectively) compared the NTB of participants with low identification with their social group, to high identifying participants. For both women and men, no significant changes were found in the NTB from pre- to post-allocation task for either high or low identifiers, regardless of whether they engaged in intergroup discrimination. Thus the central hypothesis was again not supported. Finally in Experiment 7, the NTB measure was re-evaluated and items were changed to be more group-oriented, compared to the original more individually-oriented items. The procedure used for Experiment 1 (i.e. MGP) was employed for Experiment 7 (Chapter 11) with participants completing both the personal and group versions of the NTB scale. The results for the modified group NTB scale showed that for participants who engaged in intergroup discrimination, group NTB decreased significantly from pre- to post- allocation task, compared with no significant change for those participants who did not engage in discrimination. No effects were found for either control or experimental participants� responses on the original NTB scale. Thus the central hypothesis and the results from Experiments 2 and 3 were supported. Furthermore, as was found for earlier experiments, there was no effect of either personal or collective self-esteem on the results for Experiments 4- 7. Taken overall, these results indicate that there may be a relationship between intergroup discrimination and the need to belong and that this may be most appropriately assessed using a group level measure of the NTB. Moreover, these results cannot be explained on the basis of self-esteem. Results from Experiments 2 and 3 may also indicate that if the social group category is meaningful enough for the individual (e.g. nationality), significant changes for the NTB at the personal level may occur. Despite the limitations of the present research, these results indicate that the investigation of the relationship between intergroup discrimination and the need to belong may further elucidate the underlying nature of prejudice. A number of possible directions for future research are discussed.