Self esteem Essay Example For Students

Self esteem Essay Running Head: ATHLETES Self esteem Essay VS. NON-ATHLETES SELF ESTEEM Self Esteem in Athletes Compared to Non-athletes The correlation of playing competitive sports at college level and self esteem are measured. Subjects were given the Barksdale self esteem questionnaire to fill out and levels of self esteem are measured by scores out of one hundred. The subjects are then separated into categories determined by gender and whether they played sports at the college level. The results indicated that the elite athletes have a higher self esteem than non athletes. The survey also revealed that women have a slightly higher self esteem than men. These findings agree with our hypothesis that athletes will have a higher level of self esteem than non athletes will. Self Esteem in Athletes Compared to Non-Athletes Self esteem is defined as the esteem or good opinion of ones self; Vanity( Patterson p.201). It is Defined by The New Websters Dictionary as ones evaluation of ones worth as a person based on an assessment of the qualities that make up the self-concept ( Shaffer G-9). Every one has known someone with fantastically high self esteem and someone with extremely low self esteem. It always seems to be the football captain or head cheer leader with high self esteem and the geeky computer nerd with the low self esteem. This research has set out to prove or disprove this theory. This paper will discuss in detail the method used to collect the information, the results, and the summary and conclusions of the research. It is our hypothesis that athletes will score higher on the questionnaire than non-athletes. Self esteem, as stated earlier, is a very popular term which seems to be studied a lot. In reviewing many journal articles on the topic it was found that, indeed their was a lot of research on self esteem but not research in the area of athletics and self esteem. The research that we chose to take a closer look at that directly linked to our research was a journal in the journal of college student development called; A comparison of college athletic participants and non-participants on self esteem. As well as looking at that research we also referred to the Encyclopaedia of human intelligence and an interesting article about exercise and cognitive functioning. The purpose of this research then is to find out of levels of self esteem differ in athletes and non athletes. The hypothesis drawn was that athletes would prove to have a higher overall average of self esteem when compared to non athletes. The null hypothesis is that their will be no difference between the two groups. Goals of this research are to satisfy some curiosity in the area and maybe dispel of some long reaching stereo types. It was decided that the goal would best be reached through a questionnaire given to people to fill out that would evaluate their self esteem. After going through many the Baarksdale self esteem evaluation no.69 , it was decided on as being the most thorough and the one most pertaining to he research. Some questions at the end were added asking for age, sex, and whether or not they play competitive sports. These questions were added so we could separate them onto the respective categories: athlete/non athlete. Our control group would be the group that does not play on a sports team. The athletes would be compared to them. The questionaries were handed out randomly. The people in our control group were selected randomly from the public. We simply found people and asked them to complete the self esteem survey. The athletes were not selected randomly. We chose to use our resources as current athletes. Digital Signature Essayreduces our self-esteem. Thus people often experience a negative mood state when placed in front of a mirror (Hass Eisenstadt, 1990). In fact, the more self-absorbed people are in general, the more likely they are to suffer from alcoholism, depression, anxiety, and other clinical disorders (Ingram, 1990). Self-awareness theory: The theory that self-focused attention leads people to notice self-discrepancies, thereby motivating either an escape from self-awareness or a change in behaviour (Duval, Wicklund, 1973). In summary, the relatively unusual state of self-awareness may occur when self-focus makes us aware of ourselves as objects of perception. This typically leads us to self-discrepancies between the self and some standard, which in turn has self-esteem and motivational .