Associations Of Peer Relationship And Self–esteem With Adolescent Risk–taking Behaviors

With the development of the society, people pay more attention to the problems about social adaptation and individual health which is caused by the behavioral problems. So the research of risk–taking behavior is growing.According to the Problem Behavior Theory and Biopsychosocial Model, the risk–taking behavior should be studied from individuals factors(cognition, emotion, personality) and social factors(family, friends, school, society, etc.).This study focused on the influence of individuals factors and social factors to the adolescent risk–taking, self–esteem is the important personality factors and peer relationship is the social factors which has significant influence to teenagers. And also focused on whether the types of self–esteem can play regulating role between peer relationship and risk–taking behavior.This study selected 940 students from junior middle school in Ri Zhao,and adopted Adolescent Risk–taking Questionnaire–Risk Behavior Scale(ARQ–RB), Rosenberg Self–esteem Scale(RSES),Marlowe ? Crowne Social Desirability Scale(MCSD) and peer nomination methods to measure the peer relationship. Results as follows:(1)Non–significant difference between genders and age in the positive risk–taking behavior. And significant difference between genders and age in the negative risk–taking behavior. More specifically, the boys' negative risk–taking behavior was significantly more than girls, and the negative risk–taking behavior increased with age.(2) Peer rejection can significant predict risk–taking negative behavior positively.(3) Significant differences between three types of self–esteem in the risk–taking behavior. For positive risk–taking behavior, genuine high self–esteem group was significantly higher than low self–esteem group; For negative risk–taking behavior, genuine high self–esteem group was significantly lower than defensive high self–esteem and low self–esteem, there wasn't have difference between defense high self–esteem and low self–esteem adolescents.(4) In different types of self–esteem, peer relationship predicted risk–taking behavior differently. In low self–esteem and defense high self–esteem groups, peer acceptance can not predict negative risk–taking behavior; In genuine high self–esteem, peer rejection can predict negative risk–taking behavior positively. In low self–esteem and genuine high self–esteem groups, peer acceptance can not predict risk–taking behavior positively; In defense high self–esteem, peer acceptance can predict risk–taking positive behavior positively.