Effects Of Social Relations And Social Feedback On Self-esteem Level Of Junior Middle School Students

Sociometer theory advocates that Self-esteem as an interpersonal monitor——it monitors the quality of individual interpersonal relationship.Social acceptance or rejection will affect the change of state self-esteem.However,in the empirical study of the influence of social feedback on state self-esteem,it is found that interpersonal evaluation does not directly affect state self-esteem,and there may be other mediators.To the degree that the sociometer is involved in monitoring social inclusion,different types of social relationships play an important role in regulating the role of self-esteem,especially in stable,close relationships.However,much of the experimental research supporting sociometer theory was conducted by manipulating acceptance or rejection by previously unknown strangers.In addition,the research on feedback content and self-esteem found that different feedback content has different effects on self-esteem level.Through further theoretical research on sociometer theory,we can understand the characteristics of middle school students' self-esteem development,help middle school students to acquire a sense of belonging and security through establishing good interpersonal relationships,and maintain their mental health.So this paper explores the influence of different social relationships,social feedback and feedback content on implicit self-esteem and explicit self-esteem through two experiments.It breaks the sociometer theory that used to only study singlestructured self-esteem,and proves that implicit self-esteem and explicit self-esteem are separated from each other empirically.Study 1: We examined the trend of implicit self-esteem and explicit self-esteem in junior high school students receiving acceptance or rejection under different relationship context.Participants received acceptance or rejection feedback from their friends or strangers and only those in rejection condition exhibited significantly difference.Implicit self-esteem was higher after friends' rejection than strangers',while different social relationships have no significant effect on explicit self-esteem.Study 2: On the basis of the study1,we examined the effects of various relationship,feedback and feedback content on self-esteem.The results show that social relations and social feedback have no effect on implicit self-esteem at different levels of feedback content.However,for people in a friend relationship,implicit self-esteem was more attuned to internal trait such as capacity,whereas for people in a stranger relationship,implicit self-esteem was more attuned to external trait such as appearance.At the same time,implicit self-esteem was more attuned to external trait,when people were given rejection instead of acceptance.In addition,the effects of social relationships and social feedback on explicit self-esteem were not regulated by the content of feedback.