More Than Only Skin Deep: Appearance Self-Concept Predicts Most of Secondary School Students’ Self-Esteem

Abstract

One important goal of education is to develop students' self-esteem which, in turn, hinges on their self-concept in the academic, physical, and social domains. Prior studies have shown that physical self-concept accounts for most of the variation in self-esteem, with academic and social self-concepts playing a much lesser role. As pressure toward perfection seems to be increasing in education, appearance, and social relationships (three aspects that relate to crucial developmental tasks of adolescence), the goal of the present field study was to examine whether former findings still hold true in the light of the changing societal context. A sample of 2,950 students from a broad range of German secondary schools (47% girls, age 10-19 years) responded to a recently validated German-language questionnaire assessing multiple self-concept facets (Weber and Freund, 2016). We examined which self-concept aspects predict selfesteem best and whether the pattern is comparable across genders and achievement levels using latent regression analyses. Results show that self-concept of appearance is still by far the strongest predictor (total sample: B = 0.77, SE = 0.02, p < 0.01) and that this is especially the case for girls and students from special educational schools. Other aspects play a much lesser role. The discussion explores why appearance is so neglected, compared to the more academic subjects, and what school can do to account for its vast importance for students' self-esteem.

A Medical Student-Delivered Smoking Prevention Program, Education Against Tobacco, for Secondary Schools in Germany: Randomized Controlled Trial

“…However, the intervention showed a smaller NNT for females versus males in preventing smoking onset (NNT=24 for females vs 207 for males) and the uptake of smoking for females in the intervention group was lower after 6-month and 12-month follow-ups compared to males exposed to the intervention. These data reflect the findings of a recent study by Baudson et al that was conducted with 2950 German adolescents of both genders aged 10-19 years, which showed that self-concept of appearance is the strongest predictor for self-esteem, and that this is especially true for girls and adolescents from schools with a low educational level [36]. It is notable that our data shows an NNT of 30 for nongrammar schools but an NNT of 199 for grammar schools.…”

“…The broad availability of smartphones and adolescents' interest in their appearance [36] were harnessed to create the free 3D-photoaging smartphone app Smokerface [15] which animates the users’ selfies and reacts to touch (Multimedia Appendix 1). This app is downloaded 200 times per day and the current version of the app has a rating of 4.2/5 stars in the Playstore (Android, USA).…”

A Skin Cancer Prevention Facial-Aging Mobile App for Secondary Schools in Brazil: Appearance-Focused Interventional Study (Preprint)

“…These findings are in line with international studies demonstrating the important influence of self-perceived attractiveness on self-esteem in adolescence [46,47]. Furthermore, enhancing one's attractiveness is a primary motivation for tanning in adolescents both in Brazil and worldwide [43,48,49].…”

How Valid Are Measures of Children’s Self-Concept/ Self-Esteem? Factors and Content Validity in Three Widely Used Scales

“…This represents a potential challenge to models of multidimensional self-esteem as proposed by researchers such as Marsh (1992) and Harter (1985). These large global/appearance factors reflect strong positive correlations identified in the present dataset between global self-esteem and appearance (Tatlow-Golden 2011), trends that are consistently found in empirical research across cultural settings (Baudsen et al 2016;Harter 2006Harter , 2012Klomsten et al 2004). Harter (2012) argues that self-perceptions of appearance are distinct yet that they are the primary cause of global self-esteem; an item response theory modelling analysis of the SPPC (Egberink and Meijer 2011) concluded that as global self-esteem is heavily saturated with appearance, global self-esteem subscales may be measuring appearance selfperceptions instead.…”