Font Size: a A A

The Relationship Between Depression, Self-esteem And Self-protection Strategies

Posted on:2010-04-28Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:L B RenFull Text:PDF
GTID:2167360278996676Subject:Applied Psychology
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
According to the self-worth theory of motivation, the behaviors of students are in order to protect their self-worth. Covington argued that self-worth refers to the individual's inherent sense of worth and the degree to which he or she accepts himself or herself. He also argued that failure holds implications for students'self-worth because failure is interpreted as being indicative of low ability and low ability is equated with a lack of self-worth. Thus many students go to great lengths to avoid failure or to alter it's meaning in order to protect their self-worth. These strategies is named as"failure-avoidant strategies", also named"self-protection strategies". Two strategies they can use to do this are self-handicapping and defensive pessimism.Self-handicapping involves the choice of an impediment or obstacle to successful performance that enables individuals to deflect the cause of poor performance away from their competence and onto the acquired impediment. Defensive pessimism involves setting unrealistically low expectations and thinking through a variety of possible outcomes prior to events in which one's performance is to be evaluated.In study on the infusing factors of self-protection strategies, depression and self-esteem are of importance. Among them, the depression usually pass a continuous state of low maturity of mind, accompanied by anxiety, indecision, memory impairment, difficulty thinking, isolation, pessimism, despair, self-blame and physical discomfort. Self-esteem is self-contained individual cognitive value judgments on individual self-worth, importance and success of positive emotional experience.This study base on the research results that have been at home and abroad, use literature analysis, survey and measurements, analysis their present research based on and further explore the depression, self-esteem and self-protection strategy for the internal relations. Sum up all aspects of the research, following these conclusions:(1) Implicit and explicit self-esteem have love correlation, it indicate that the two dimensions of self-esteem are the relative independence.(2) There is a significant difference in depression between different genders, male students having more prone to depression than female students; love situation have significant differences in depression.(3) There is a significant difference in self-esteem between different gender, boys are significantly higher than girls in explicit self-esteem, and there is no difference in implicit self-esteem; There has the main effect between love situation and implicit self-esteem, there is no difference in explicit self-esteem, but love situation and the one-child have significant interaction in both implicit self-esteem and self-esteem.(4)University students of different gender have no significant differences in self-handicapping and defensive pessimism strategy; only-child, different residence, love situation has significant difference in self-handicapping, and the strategy of defensive pessimism was no significant differences.(5) Depression has a negatively significant correlation with explicit self-esteem, and has positively significant correlation with self-handicapping and defensive pessimism; explicit self-esteem has a negatively significant correlation with self-handicapping and defensive pessimism, implicit self-esteem has positively correlated with self-handicapping, defensive pessimism is not significant; there have significant correlation between self-handicapping defensive pessimism.(6)Depression and implicit self-esteem is significantly positive predicator of self-handicapping and defensive pessimism, explicit self-esteem is significantly negative of self-handicapping; self-esteem mediates the relationship between depression and self-protection strategies.
Keywords/Search Tags:depression, explicit self-esteem, implicit self-esteem, self-protection strategies, self-handicapping, defensive pessimism
PDF Full Text Request
Related items