Discrepancy On Maturity-appraisals And Its Relations With Mental Health Of College Students

As a criterion, maturity has general applicability, but different people have different ideas on what means to be mature. And we also find that the discrepancy between the evaluations on whether one is mature from the one-self and the perceived others often results in certain psychological distress. Hence we try to explore the meaning of maturity in the eye of college students from the view of psychology, by the quantitative method, and then do further research on the discrepancy between the maturity-self and mirrored maturity-self, as well as explicit and implicit maturity-self, and its relations with undergraduate mental health in this thesis. Four related studies about maturity are contained.In study one, we aim at formulating a maturity-glossary, a tool can be used for further research. Method of literature review, open questionnaire survey (on72subjects) and case interviews (on7subjects) were used to explore the connotation of maturity and to collect related vocabularies. All the words collected are listed together after the preliminary arrangement as a questionnaire which can be distributed to the college students. We ask the students to select the words that can best represent a maturity person and keep the words of high frequency for the next investigation. The factor analysis method is used to select words that suitable for the maturity vocabulary after three investigations. Then seven experts are invited to give an assessment on the validity of the vocabulary, and further modification is made to the word list according to their advice. The vocabulary has good reliability and validity, can be used for further investigation.Study two is an investigation on the discrepancy between maturity-self appraisal and the reflected maturity-self, and its relation with mental health of college students. We focus on studying the phenomenon of the discrepancy on the assessment about maturity of individual from the self and the reflected others, and exploring the relation with mental health of college students. The word list made up in study one is used to set up the maturity evaluation scale with three dimensions:"self-evaluation","in friends’ impression" and "in the eye of parents". The social avoided dimension of Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SAD), Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS), Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (RSES) and Satisfaction with Life Scale(SWLS) are used as mental health indicators.450respondents from six universities are involved in this survey, and387of them give valid feedbacks. The result indicates that college students’ self-appraisal on maturity is consistent with mirrored friends’ evaluation, and both are higher than mirrored parents’ evaluation. Moreover the students whose self-assessment is consistent with the reflected-appraisals have much better satisfaction with their lives than the inconsistent ones. Furthermore, the ones who perceive higher evaluation from their parents than themselves have higher level of depression and less positive self-evaluation.Study three is about the discrepancy between implicit self-maturity and explicit self-maturity and how the discrepancy is related with mental health of college students. We aim to demonstrate the existence of implicit self-maturity, and explore the inconsistency in implicit and explicit maturity-assessment, as well as the effects that this disharmony may bring to the individuals. The implicit association tests (IAT) combined with the scale used in study two make up the whole experiment and110involved college students give valid responses. The study confirms the existence of implicit self-maturity and also finds that the individuals whose explicit self-appraisal on maturity is higher than their implicit one are healthier than the ones who do the opposite.The forth study is a case interview in order to validate the results of previous research and make necessary supplement. This is a further research on the meaning of maturity, the discrepancy between self and perceive other appraisals on maturity-self, as well as the possible effects that the inconsistence may bring to the students from an individual perspective. A total of8college students participate in the semi-structured interview and are asked to complete the same questionnaire as in study three. Results confirm that college students do show a tendency to focus on the internal positive quality of maturity, and the individuals do have higher self-evaluation than reflected evaluation from parents on maturity-self. The study also shows that, the negative aspect of maturity indeed exists. The inconsistency in appraisal of self-maturity has certain effects on individual’s psychology and behaviors, but the effects may be influenced by ones’ cognition, self-maturity, etc. One of the reasons why individuals perceived their parents think they are more mature than what they really are is that the individuals assume that they should take more family responsibility. It is also proved that the quantitative research do has certain problems, and provide more research space as well as new ideas for future research.