↓ Skip to main content

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

Overview of attention for article published in Frontiers in Psychology, October 2016
Altmetric Badge

Mentioned by

twitter
1 X user

Citations

dimensions_citation
36 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
85 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
More Than Only Skin Deep: Appearance Self-Concept Predicts Most of Secondary School Students’ Self-Esteem
Published in
Frontiers in Psychology, October 2016
DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01568
Pubmed ID
Authors

Tanja G. Baudson, Kira E. Weber, Philipp A. Freund

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 self-esteem 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.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profile of 1 X user who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 85 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 85 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 16 19%
Student > Master 10 12%
Lecturer 5 6%
Student > Doctoral Student 4 5%
Researcher 4 5%
Other 13 15%
Unknown 33 39%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 24 28%
Social Sciences 6 7%
Nursing and Health Professions 4 5%
Sports and Recreations 4 5%
Environmental Science 3 4%
Other 14 16%
Unknown 30 35%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 03 April 2022.
All research outputs
#18,951,048
of 23,482,849 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Psychology
#23,146
of 31,308 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#241,600
of 318,208 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Psychology
#374
of 451 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,482,849 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 11th percentile – i.e., 11% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 31,308 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.6. This one is in the 19th percentile – i.e., 19% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 318,208 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 13th percentile – i.e., 13% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 451 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 11th percentile – i.e., 11% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.