A Research On The Relationship Between Elementary School Students’ Parental Rearing Styles And Social Creativity: The Mediating Role Of Self-esteem

The cultivation of creativity not only has a major impact on children’sdevelopment, but also it is related to national future. Since the early 1980s, creativefields become the hotshot problem. Social creativity involves children’ ability to solveinterpersonal problems with creativity. This ability is the mark of individualpsychological development, and it is also the foundation for children to adapt to thesocial life. Studies have shown that parental rearing styles and self-esteem areimportant factors to creativity, and parental rearing styles affect children’s level ofself-esteem. Researches have revealed parental rearing styles affect children’sself-esteem, self-esteem is the effective variable to predict individual creativity. Thisstudy intends the general creativity study to social creativity research. Combined withsocial creativity field particularity, in this study, we will explore the influence ofparental rearing styles and self-esteem toward social creativity and the role ofself-esteem in the relationship between parental rearing styles and social creativity ofelementary students.This paper carried out 2 studies, the first study to revise "social creativity test", thesecond study is to explore the effects of social factors and mechanism of creativity.This study revised social creativity questionnaire of the elementary students. On thebasis of collecting relevant Chinese and English data and the connotation andextension of the concept, 120 elementary students were on the open questionnairesurvey. Psychology experts and primary school teachers in practice had evaluatedappropriation of the issues. The content analysis shows that the interpersonal issue inelementary school students includes 3 life situations: teacher-student interaction,parent-child interaction and peer interaction. On the basis above, preliminary questionnaire was formed which include 9 problems. Then, 356 elementary schoolstudents were selected as subjects, according to their answers to the problems theyencounter in their social life, social creativity questionnaire manual was eventuallyformed. Formal social creativity test include 6 problems. Reliability and validity isproper to measurement requirements.565 students were selected from grade five, six in primary school as participates,they are from two areas (linyi and jinan) and five schools. The data of psychologicalcontrol, psychological autonomy support, self-esteem, and social creativity wascollected by the way of questionnaire survey. We used the analysis of variance,correlation and regression to explore the relationship of parental rearing styles,self-esteem and the social creativity of elementary students. The conclusions were asfollows:1. Social creativity has significant difference in gender, the girls’ social creativityis higher than that of boys’. In the dimension of creativity suitability, city-countrysidehas significant difference, student in countryside has higher social creativity than thestudents in city .2. Parents’ psychological control has significant difference in gender, area, grade.Boys’ psychological control are significantly higher than girls’; Students living in thecountryside have higher psychological control level than students living in city;students of grade 5 have significantly higher lever than students of grade six.3. Parents’ psychological control can significantly positively predict socialcreativity. Psychological autonomy support can significantly negatively predict socialcreativity.4. Self-esteem can significantly positively predict social creativity. Self-esteemcould partly mediate the relationship between psychological control/autonomysupport and social creativity.5. Self-esteem could partly mediate the relationship between psychologicalcontrol and fluency/flexibility/originality/ suitability; Self-esteem could completelymediate the relationship between autonomy support and fluency/flexibility/originality. Self-esteem could partly mediate the relationship between autonomy support andsuitability.