Thinking styles, self‐esteem, and extracurricular experiences

Abstract

This study had two objectives. The first was to examine the relationship between thinking styles and self‐esteem. The second objective was to investigate the relationship of the participants' extracurricular experiences to both thinking styles and self‐esteem. Seven‐hundred and ninety‐four university students from Hong Kong participated in the study. Participants responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory (Sternberg & Wagner, 1992) and the Self‐Esteem Inventory (Adult Form, Coopersmith, 1981) as well as to a questionnaire designed to elicit both personal and situational characteristics. It was found that thinking styles and self‐esteem are statistically related. Meanwhile, both thinking styles and self‐esteem are statistically related to the participants' extracurricular experiences. Implications of these findings for teachers are discussed.

A Threefold Model of Intellectual Styles

“…Some scholars suggest that traits are in-built characteristics that are hard to change. Because our research (e.g., Zhang, 1999aZhang, , 2001aZhang and Sachs, 1997;Zhang and Sternberg, 2002) and other scholars' research (e.g., Collins, 1994;Huey-You, 1985;Linden, 1973;Mshelia and Lapidus, 1990) indicate that the majority of styles are trainable (and/or socialized), we argue that the styles in the Threefold Model of Intellectual Styles represent states. However, status as states does not mean that intellectual styles constantly change.…”

“…Thinking styles that are more creative and that require higher levels of cognitive complexity (e.g., legislative, judicial, global, hierarchical, and liberal styles-labeled as "Type I thinking styles") were related to higher levels of self-esteem (Zhang, 2001a;Zhang and Postiglione, 2001), higher cognitive-developmental levels (Zhang, 2002a), the personality trait of openness to experience (Zhang, 2002b,c;Zhang and Huang, 2001), and a stronger sense of purposefulness concerning vocational purpose, avocational-recreational purpose, and style of life (Zhang, 2002d). Moreover, thinking styles that suggest favoring of norms and that denote lower levels of cognitive complexity (e.g., the executive, local, monarchic, and conservative styles-labeled as "Type II thinking styles") were related to lower self-esteem, lower cognitive-developmental levels, the personality trait of neuroticism, and a lack of sense of purposefulness.…”

“…It was aimed at addressing the issue of whether styles represent traits or states. Although none of the studies was longitudinal and thus had a focus on examining the stability (versus flexibility) of thinking styles of individuals over time, several cross-sectional studies have indicated that students' thinking styles vary as a function of age, gender, birth order, academic discipline, socioeconomic status, work experience, traveling experience, and extracurricular experience (e.g., Sternberg and Grigorenko, 1995;Zhang, 1999aZhang, , 2001aZhang and Postiglione, 2001).…”

Predictive Analysis Among Thinking Styles, Goal Orientations and Academic Achievement of Student Teachers

“…The research done by Zhang, Sternberg and their colleagues (Zhang, 2000b and2001c;Zhang, 2003;Zhang and Postiglione, 2001;Zhang and Sternberg, 2000) shows that the thinking styles in Sternberg's theory can be classified into three groups. The first group consists of legislative, judicial, hierarchical, global, and liberal styles that generate creativity and require higher levels of cognitive complexity which were referred to as Type 1 thinking styles.…”

“…In the studies, thinking styles based on the theory of MSG were examined in relation to learning approaches (Zhang and Sternberg, 2000), learning styles (Cano-Garcia and Hewitt Hughes, 2000), personality types (Balk›s and Ifl›ker, 2005;Zhang, 2001a), teaching approaches (Duman and Çelik, 2011;Zhang, 2001b), self-esteem (Zhang, 2001c;Zhang and Postiglione, 2001), academic achievement (Bulufl, 2006;Grigorenko and Sternberg, 1997;Zhang, 2004b;Zhang and Sternberg, 1998), cognitive developmental levels (Zhang, 2002a), modes of thinking (Zhang, 2002b), critical thinking dispositions (Emir, 2013;Zhang, 2003), students' preferences for teaching styles and students' conceptions of effective teachers (Zhang, 2004a), self regulated learning strategies and motivation towards mathematics (Akkufl ‹spir, Ay and Sayg›, 2011), locus of control (Baflol and Türko¤lu, 2009) and social skill levels (Y›ld›z, 2012).…”