The Research On The Relation Between Junior Middle School Students' Downward Comparison And Test Anxiety

There was a long history of research in the test anxiety, and so far a lot of useful results were elicited. The existence of negative affect on the students by the test anxiety was conformed by some researches. The social comparison in recent years has been a hot topic in the field of social psychology. As a type of the social comparison, the downward comparison has been also noticed by many people, and it also impacted on individual health of psychology and emotion. As a state anxiety, the test anxiety would surely be affected by the downward comparison. Therefore, starting from a new point of view like the downward comparison to explore the test anxiety can give us some new ideas about alleviating or preventing the test anxiety.Adopted the downward comparison scale, test anxiety scale, academic self-efficacy scale and coping style scale, this research surveyed 901 junior middle school students in four schools from three cities of Yueyang, Changsha and Xiangtan, in order to explore the following issues: (1)the junior middle school students'peculiarity of downward comparison and test anxiety; (2)the relationship between junior middle school students'downward comparison and academic self-efficacy, coping style; (3) the relationship between junior middle school students'test anxiety and academic self-efficacy, coping style; (4)academic self-efficacy and coping style play intermediary roles between downward comparison and test anxiety.The results show that:(1)The majority (82.8%) junior middle school students'test anxiety at the normal level, but still 17.2% of the students'test anxiety level is too high.(2)There are significant differences in junior middle school students'downward comparison between different grades, and also between urban and rural; there are significant differences in junior middle school students'test anxiety between different grades, between urban and rural, and between the only child and non-only child.(3) Downward comparison negatively correlates with learning capacity self-efficacy, learning behavior self-efficacy and problem solving, and positively correlates with withdrawal, venting and tolerance. Downward comparison negatively predicts their learning capacity self-efficacy, learning behavior self-efficacy, problem solving, positively predicts withdrawal, venting, fantasy, and tolerance.(4) The test anxiety negatively correlates with learning capacity self-efficacy, learning behavior self-efficacy, problem solving, and positively correlates with venting, fantasy, tolerance. Learning capacity self-efficacy, learning behavior self-efficacy, and problem solving can predict the test anxiety negatively, while fantasy, help seeking, venting and tolerance can predict the test anxiety positively.(5) Downward comparison positively correlates with the test anxiety, and it has a significant positive effect on test anxiety. Learning capacity self-efficacy and fantasy play intermediary roles between downward comparison and test anxiety, learning behavior self-efficacy play intermediary role between downward comparison and fantasy. Thus, the relationship between junior middle school students'downward comparison and test anxiety is much closed. Downward comparison can not only impact on test directly, but also impact on test anxiety by academic self-efficacy and coping style indirectly.