Self-Esteem, Social Comparison And Their Relationship In People With Intellectual Disability

Nowadays researchers have paid more and more attention to the psychological health and quality of life of people with intellectual disability, who are the weak group in society and faced with a variety of difficulties and obstacles in their lives due to their deficit. Since self-esteem and social comparison have been proven to be closely related to psychological problems in people with intellectual disability, self-esteem and social comparison and their relationships have caught more and more researchers' eyes.This study focuses on the characteristics of self-esteem, social comparison, and their relationship in people with intellectual disability, in order to explore the factors that influenced these characteristics, work out appropriate intervention methods to change the self-esteem and social comparison in people with intellectual disability, and improve their quality of life in the end.This study examines the characteristics of self-esteem, social comparison, and their relationship in 21 individuals with intellectual disability from the Sun House and a secondary technical school in Shanghai by questionnaire, interview and experiment. The results showed that:(1) the level of self-esteem in people with intellectual disability is relatively lower and their self evaluation is more negative than nondisabled people. Gender difference in self-esteem in people with intellectual disability was not found while participants from the Sun House show higher level of self-esteem than those from the school; (2) people with intellectual disability showed moderate social comparison orientation in this study, and that means they compare themselves with others neither frequently nor barely; (3) people with intellectual disability seemed to prefer upward social comparisons; (4) the evaluation of the comparison targets of people with intellectual disability is influenced by who the target is. Individuals with intellectual disability prefer giving higher evaluations to their teachers and more talent peers and lower evaluations to less talent peers; (5) the evaluation is also influenced by self-esteem. People with intellectual disability gave even lower evaluations to their less talent peers when their self-esteem is threatened; (6) Whether self-esteem changes or not, individuals with intellectual disability hold their preferences to the upward social comparison; (7) Among the emotions appear after the comparisons, positive emotions are significantly more than negative ones.At the end of this study, a summary has been made and the influences made by self-enhancement and self-protection on self-esteem and social comparison in people with intellectual disability have been discussed. Intellectual disabled participants seem to prefer self-enhancement due to the safe conditions they have.