The Adolescent Self-esteem And Life Satisfaction Relationship,

Subjective well-being (SWB) is central to human existence, life satisfaction is the most important index of SWB. Self-concept, especially self-esteem is considered one of the most important variables predicting subjective well-being. Psychologists tend to take people's self-concept as a multi-dimensional structure that includes physical self. Body is the primes symbol of the self, and the prime determinant of the self, but the research of relationship between body self and life satisfaction is scarce. Three studies were conducted to assess the relationship between physical self and life satisfaction,Study 1 compared body self-esteem measurement tools in China and abroad, revising Body Self-esteem Scale in Chinese edition. Investigated 558 adolescents' body self-esteem, general self-esteem and life satisfaction by questionnaire in Beijing. The results of the investigation indicated that there existed sex difference in body self-esteem of adolescents in Beijing, the male's score is higher than female's (p=0.000), the difference was significant. Sex difference in general self-esteem (p=0.180) and life satisfaction (p=0.269) was not significant. The college students' general self-esteem score higher than senior high school students' (p=0.026), the difference was significant. From point of cognitive view, the authors proposed "top-down" and "bottom-up" two mediation models to predict the relationship among abstract physical self-esteem, concrete body self-esteem, general self-esteem and life satisfaction. The results indicated that adolescents in Beijing evaluated themselves in both ways.Study 2 focus on objective body shape and subjective body evaluation contribute to predict life satisfaction, 352 participants from study 1 were measured 18 objective body shape index. Factor analysis indicated that fatness and highness are two primary factors of objective body shape. The results indicated that significant negative medium correlations existed between fatness and abstract physical self-esteem (male: -0.401, female: -0.360). Fatness and abstract physical self-esteem failed to predict life satisfaction whereas highness and concrete body self-esteem contributed to the prediction of life satisfaction. Concrete body self-esteem has the best effect among them.Study 3 focus on implicit body self study, implied DMDX software present three people's photos, participant's photos in them. The results indicated that correct reactions time are shorter than wrong reactions time, the time which participant used looked at their own photos are longer than other's. Significant negative medium correlations existed between implicit evaluation of model's photos and explicit abstract physical self-esteem of participant himself (-0.66), and between implicit evaluation of participant's photos and explicit life satisfaction evaluation of participant himself (-0.50). The results also indicated that participants love themselves much more than love others. The authors inferred that evaluation and acceptation are two different dimensions, person prefer to acceptation dimension in the light of themselves, while prefer to evaluation dimension in view of other peoples, accept may need more deeply cognitive process than evaluate.