Inferiority Feelings Of The College Student

A considerable amount of research and psychological consulting practice showed that inferiority feelings were widespread among college students. Most researchers had defined the college student's inferiority from a negative perspective, but rarely see the positive meaning that it may also become a driving force for the progress of the individual. The formation of the inferiority feelings had its specificity; to a large extent, it is caused by the unreasonable self-evaluation in all aspects when the student compared himself or herself with others in the community. Based on the previous illustration, the inferiority feelings of college students was defined as: in the process of pursuing superiority, one's feelings of disappointment interweaved with powerlessness and helplessness when one can not reach him or her goals, due to the impact in reality, especially comparing with others. This sense of inferiority may whip up the individual's continuous pursuit of superiority. However, if one can not achieve what he or she wishes and feels frustrated frequently, he or she may feel disappointing , wavering and even be trapped into inferiority complex. The inferiority we were surveying included both the temporary disappointing and helpless feelings that comes out because one can not reach his or her goals, and the relatively serious inferiority complex.Most of the psychological problems of college students were originated and consolidated in self-concept. Student's self-concept was often far from the truth, and whose psychological problem was mostly from individual imagination and ideas arisen from the default. Therefore, we made the college student's self-concept as the entry point and gave the definition to the fictional self-concept which is taken as the inherent mechanism to explain the inferiority feelings of college students. Fictional self referred to the negative level of perception, experience and idea, which was individually imaginary and hindered individual action and giving fully play to the potential when one was faced with specific situations. Correspondingly, the actual self referred to the potential quality which will be shown once given the appropriate conditions and opportunities.On this basis, we designed the questionnaire on testing the inferiority feelings of college students in China from the point of social comparison and the questionnaire on the self discrepancy between fictional self and actual self of college students, in order to describe and examine the college student's inferiority feelings, self discrepancy between fictional self and actual self and the relationship between the two. A survey covered 572 students in 3 colleges in Guangxi came to the conclusions as follow:1. Self-designed Questionnaire of College Student's Inferiority Feelings had a good reliability and validity. The factor analysis obtained five factors which were interpersonal inferiority, disposition inferiority, appearance inferiority, family inferiority and academic inferiority. They could explain the total variance of 55.28%.2. Self-designed Questionnaire of College Student's Self Discrepancy Between Fictional Self and Actual Self had a good reliability and validity. The factor analysis obtained four fully corresponding factors, which were interpersonal self, academic self, talent and skill self, physical self. They could explain the total amount of variance more than 50%.3. The inferiority feelings of college students were in the medium level overall. Because of social comparison, interpersonal, academic and appearance of inferiority feelings were more serious; family and disposition inferiority were relatively light.4. The inferiority feelings of college students had the significant differences in grade, urban and rural areas and whether the leader of students(P<0.05). The senior students in the inferiority of interpersonal, academic and appearance were significantly lower than other grades(P<0.05). The inferiority feelings of Students from rural areas were significantly higher than that of urban students(P<0.01). The inferiority feelings of non-student leaders were significantly higher than that of student leaders(P<0.05).5. There were discrepancies between fictional self and actual self of college students, but not very serious. The discrepancy of academic self was relatively large, followed by the talent and skill self discrepancy, interpersonal and physical self discrepancy.6. College student's self discrepancy had a significant main effect in the grade(P<0.05). The self discrepancies of freshmen were significantly larger than those of other grades(P<0.05).7. College student's self discrepancy had a significant interaction between major and resident place(P<0.05). Speaking of the liberal arts college students, besides the academic self discrepancy, the self discrepancy of students from countryside were significantly larger than that from city(P<0.05). Speaking of students from rural areas, liberal arts college student's self discrepancy was significantly larger than the science student's(P<0.05).8. The self discrepancy of student's inferiority feelings level of high and low groups had significant differences(P<0.001). The self discrepancies of students that of high inferiority feelings level groups were significantly larger than those of low inferiority feelings level. The inferiority feelings of student's self discrepancy of high and low groups had significant differences(P<0.01). The inferiority feelings of students in high self discrepancy were significantly higher than that of in low self discrepancy.9. The correlation between college student's inferiority feelings and self discrepancies were significant expect the family inferiority and physical self discrepancy(P<0.01).10. The stepwise regression analysis showed that self discrepancy of interpersonal, academic, talent and skill had an important effect on their inferiority feelings (R2=0.22,P<0.001).