The Measurement Of And Characteristics Of Self-deception Of Undergraduate

As a pervasive mental phenomenon, self-deception played an important role in people’s mental health. Many researches had showed that the relationship between self-deception and mental health was complex. Self-deception was maladaptive in some aspects of people’s psychology; however, self-deception had some positive adaptive value. Self-deception played a positive role in mental adjustment, the maintenance of human’s mental health and self-esteem; and it also promoted one’s subjective well-being and intentions to cooperate. But there are little empirical studies about self-deception from the psychology point in the China. The purpose of this study is to develop a questionnaire of Self-deception of College Students, using this questionnaire to do some researches on the self-deception, and to discuss the relationship of self-deception, narcissism and self-esteem.Based on overviews of former researches, analysis the open-ended questionnaire and the exploring factor analysis, counseling of experts, we proposed the operational definition and structural model of College Students’self-deception, got an initial questionnaire of Self-deception of College Students, including29items. We investigated305college students using the initial questionnaire; and after exploring factor analysis, we finally formed the final questionnaire, including15items, three factors. Then we investigated738college students using the formal questionnaire, to examine reliability and validity of this questionnaire and to test the structure of the final questionnaire by Structural Equation Model. At the same time, we did some researches on the characteristic of students’self-deception, and discussed the relationship of self-deception, narcissism and self-esteem.The main results are as follows:(1) College students’self-deception is a multi-facet and multi-dimensional structure, which includes three factors:enhancement, denial and rationalization. (2) The self-designed questionnaire of Self-deception of College Students has high reliability and validity, and it could be used as an effective measurement to test self-deception of college students.(3) There are no significant differences in self-deception and its three factors (enhancement, denial and rationalization) among college students of different genders, among students from urban or rural areas; there are no in college students’ self-deception between the only-child and the non-only-child.In the self-deception enhancement, the score of group between20-year-old and22-year-old is significantly higher than the score of group between17-year-old and19-year-old; but there are no significant differences in total score of self-deception, self-deception denial and rationalization of college students of different ages.(4) There are positive relationships between overt narcissism and self-deception, enhancement, denial and rationalization; and there are also positive relationships between covert narcissism and self-deception, enhancement, denial and rationalization.(5) There are negative relationships between self-esteem and denial, rationalization, positive relationship between self-deception and enhancement; but the positive relationship between self-esteem and total self-deception isn’t significant.(6) The positive effect of overt narcissism on self-esteem is partially mediated by self-deception enhancement.