Morita Neurotic Personality And Self-esteem As Mediators Of The Perfectionism-Social Anxiety Relationship

The era of one-child growing up is coming in our country, high expection is given tothe children by their families, and too much emphasis on the development of IQ is alsogiven to the children, but development of EQ such as social skills is ignored, these lead tomany students tend to be introverted, self-centered, over low self-esteem, poorinterpersonal skills, many psychological problems is occurred, such as social anxiety,obsessive-compulsive, depression and so on.Objectives: The purpose of this study is to analyze and discuss the relationship ofcollege students’ morita neurotic personality, perfectionism tendency, self-esteem andsocial anxiety. The quantitative analysis and discussion may provide theoretical basis forcarrying out the future psychological health education of students with neuroticpersonality and perfectionism tendency. Methods: A random sampling method was used in this study. We finally chose700undergraduates of four universities in xi’an, and made the survey with Morita NeuroticPersonality Questionnaire (MNPQ), Frost Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale(FMPS),Interaction Anxiety Scale(IAS) and Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale(SES). Statisticalmethods including independent sample t-test, χ2test, correlation analysis and structuralequation model were used in this study.Results: Firstly, the proportion of college students with Morita neuroticpersonality(MNP) was relatively high, accounting for23.7%of the number of validquestionnaires; The average score of college students was(40.62±7.95), the high level ofsocial anxiety among college students account for16.3%of the number of validquestionnaires.Secondly, we found gender differnces on the aspect of morita neurotic personality (t=2.043, p<2.043), the organization(OR)(t=3.623, p<0.001), and parents’ expectation(PE)(t=3.326, p<0.001) of perfectionism; and we also found differnces betweenonly-child or not only-child college students on the aspect of morita neurotic personality(t=2.740, p<0.01), the self-esteem level (t=2.520, p<0.05), the scores for only-childcollege students were significantly higher than not one-child college students; Yet thecollege students of different origin had no significant difference in MNP, perfectionism,self-esteem level.Thirdly, we found significant difference between MNP students and non-MNPstudents on the aspect of total perfectionism (t=5.809, p<0.001), the maladaptiveperfectionism(t=6.819,p<0.001) including four dimensions of concern over mistakes(CM)(t=5.101, p<0.001), and parental expectation (PE)(t=3.252,p<0.001), the personalstandard(PS)(t=2.132, p<0.05) and doubt about action(DA)(t=7.619, p<0.001) thescores all above of MNP students were significantly higher than the scores of non-MNPstudents. We also found significant difference between MNP students and non-MNPstudents on the aspect of total social anxiety scores (t=25.803, p<0.001) and social anxiety levels (χ2=309.67, p<0.001). The self-esteem scores on MNP students (t=6.689,p<0.001) were significantly lower than the scores on non-MNP students.Fourthly, we found that self-esteem and morita neurotic personality were themediators of maladaptive perfectionism-social anxiety. We confirmed that self-esteemand MNP were totally mediating role between maladaptive perfectionism and socialanxiety by means of mediation effect test. Structural equation model fitting index were:χ2/df was1.38, RMSEA was0.051, SRMR was0.059, GFI was0.92, CFI was0.99.Conclusions: Firstly, the proportion of college students with morita neuroticpersonality is relatively high. The scores of morita neurotic personality on boys arehigher than on girls, and the scores on one-child college students are higher than on nonone-child students. Therefore, we should focus on the shape of college students’characters, especially the male college students and also the one-child college students.Secondly, college students with morita neurotic personality have more perfectionismtendencies than other college students, particularly on the maladaptive perfectionism,such as concern over mistakes (CM), parental expections (PE),personal standard (PS) anddoubts about action (DA). While college students with morita neurotic personality onsocial anxiety scores are also higher than that of other college students, but self-esteemlevels are lower than other students.Thirdly, morita neurotic personalities can positively predict social anxiety. However,maladaptive perfectionism tendency is indirectly predict social anxiety through moritaneurotic personality and low self-esteem levels. Morita neurotic personality andself-esteem play a completely mediation role. On our future psychological healtheducation, we should cultivate college students to get appropriate levels of self-esteem,and try to treat perfectionism correctly, in order to avoid the formation of morita neuroticpersonality on college students,as well as reducing the risk of suffering from socialanxiety.