The Relationship Between Social Adaptive Behavior And Self-consciousness Of Adolescent Students

Adaptation and development are important tasks for everyone, in particular the social adaptive behaviors and self-consciousness are of great significance during the adolescent period. Self-consciousness is a multi-leveled and multi-dimensional model, it refers to the consciousness of oneself and the consciousness of the relationship between oneself and his surroundings, including self-cognition, self-emotion, and self-control. Early scientific researches mainly focus on the self-concept, self-esteem or self-control, however, the studies of self-consciousness are rarely reported although the self-consciousness has been recognized to be fundamentally important for the psychological functioning.Based on the above understanding of the self-consciousness, two specific aims are targeted in the present study, including emending the Adolescent Self-Consciousness Scale(ASC,2007), and exploring the relationship between the self-consciousness and the social adaptive behaviors. At the same time, the characters of adolescent self-consciousness and social adaptive behaviors have been studied as well. And all the research results are summarized in this thesis as four parts :Part 1 is the introduction of the research background and significance of this research from the perspective of the social reality and the adolescent reality, with the research framework and the methodology being briefly illustrated.Part 2 is the research of the emended scale. On the basis of the literature and the expert interviews, the current study formulates the emended scale, and 579 adolescents are tested based upon exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Our results illustrate that self-consciousness consists of 9 factors which represent 3 dimensionalities. The first dimensionality is self-cognition including: body appraisement, ability appraisement and morality appraisement. The second is self-emotion including: self-esteem, anxiety and satisfaction. The third is self-control including: self-continence, self-motion and self-supervision. The credibility and validity of this formulated form have been clearly illustrated by our tests.Part 3 is the research of the characters of adolescent self-consciousness and social adaptive behaviors by using the ASC formulated in the research and the Scale of Adolescents' Social Adaptive Behavior. In our research, 478 students ranging from 3 different middle schools and from 4 grades (7, 8, 10, 11) in Guangzhou were investigated. The results show that: (1) The adolescents' social adaptive behaviors are at the upper-middle level in general, and the Grade 7 and Grade 8 students got higher score on well-adaptive behaviors than Grade 10 and Grade 11 students, the Grade 11 students got highest score on maladaptive behaviors in the four grades; (2) Whether the students are the only child or not in their families, no significant difference was found in social well-adaptive (maladaptive) behaviors; (3) The group's social well-adaptive (maladaptive) behaviors differ significantly in schools and genders, and there is an interaction between schools and grades in maladaptive behaviors. (4) The adolescents' self-consciousness also are at the upper-middle level in general. The reported score reaches its lowest point in Grade 10 and then increases. (5) Whether the students are the only child or not in their families, no significant difference was found in self-consciousness. (6) Significant difference about the adolescent self-consciousness was found in different schools, grades genders and whether writing diaries or not, and there were interactions between schools and grades, schools and whether writing diaries or not, grades and genders. Schools, grades, genders and the habit of writing diaries play an important role on the adolescent self-consciousness.Part 4 is the investigation regarding the adopting related analysis, linear regression, and the relationship between adolescent self-consciousness and their social adaptive behaviors. It is found that: (1) Social well-adaptive behaviors are positively associated with self-consciousness, self-esteem, ability appraisement, self-motion, self-supervision and morality appraisement. While social maladaptive behaviors are negatively related to self-consciousness, self-esteem, self-continence, (interaction) ability appraisement, self-motion, self-supervision, morality appraisement and satisfaction. (2) Different factors of self-consciousness have different predictable power on well-adaptive behaviors and maladaptive behaviors in students of different grades. The steadiest predictors of well-adaptive behaviors, neurosis behavior and poor-social behavior are self-motion, anxiety and self-continence, respectively. (3) Different factors of self-consciousness have different predictable power on well-adaptive behaviors and maladaptive behaviors in students of different genders. Self-motion, morality appraisement and self-continence are the strongest and steadiest predictor of well-adaptive behaviors. For the male samples, self-continence is the primary predictor on well-adaptive behaviors; for the female samples, however, self-motion and anxiety are the primary predictors on maladaptive behaviors. (4) In the two-way factors, self-control is the strongest and steadiest predictor of adolescent adaptive behaviors, which can account for 25.1% of the variance in self-reported social well-adaptive behaviors and for 11.9% of the variance in self-reported social maladaptive behaviors.