Which One Determine Your Self-esteem? Physical Appearance Or Psychological Character

Self-esteem is not only an important content of the self,but also an important basis for a healthy personality.A high level of self-esteem is conducive to the development of children's mental health,and is also conducive to the positive emotions of junior high school students.At the same time,adults with high self-esteem report less negative emotions such as depression and anxiety,and report higher life satisfaction.The pursuit of high self-esteem makes individuals constantly recognize and evaluate themselves,and actively seek the feedback of others on themselves.The recognition and evaluation of individuals and the feedback of others also affect the self-esteem of individuals.Physical appearance and psychological character,as the two important dimensions of self-knowledge,have a significant impact on individual's self-esteem.Physical appearance mainly refers to the individual's appearance,body and other exposed physiological characteristics,it is the most important part of the physical self;psychological character mainly refers to the individual's internal characteristics,including kindness,friendliness and other traits that emphasize the establishment of close relationship with others,as well as the ability and intelligence displayed in the pursuit of achievements and goals.Previous studies have shown that an individual's self-evaluation of his physical appearance or psychological character can predict his level of self-esteem.Moreover,in the process of others' feedback,others' positive or negative psychological character/physical appearance feedback on individuals will also affect their self-esteem.But it is not clear which of the two self-assessments is more likely to predict an individual's self-esteem,and which of the two feedbacks is more likely to influence people's self-esteem.Compared with physical appearance,psychological character plays a more important role in individual's self-concept.Therefore,compared with physical appearance self-evaluation,psychological character self-evaluation may have a stronger predictive effect on individual self-esteem.In addition,psychological character feedback fromothers,compared with physical appearance feedback,may also more affect an individual's self-esteem.Based on the above questions,in study 1 and study 2,the participants were asked to evaluate their physical appearance and psychological character,and the trait self-esteem of the participants was also measured to explore the predictive effect of physical appearance and psychological character self-evaluation on trait self-esteem.Study 3 with the technology of fMRI,and by presenting subjects with standardized appearance/character feedback from others to investigate the effect of physical appearanceorpsychological character on state self-esteem and it's neural mechanisms.Study1,20 physical appearance adjectives and 20 psychological character adjectives were selected as the experimental materials.Subjects were asked to evaluate the degree of conformity between the adjectives and themselves,and at the same time measure the trait self-esteem of the subjects.Regression analysis of the data revealed that psychological character had a stronger predictive effect on individual trait self-esteem than physical appearance.Study 2,16 physical appearance adjectives and 16 psychological character adjectives were selected as experimental materials to exclude the untrue scores caused by the gender differences in the applicability of the adjectives in Study 1.The experimental procedure is as the same in Study 1.Found that psychological character had a stronger predictive effect on individual self-esteem than physical appearance.Study 3,144 physical appearance adjectives and 144 psychological character adjectives were selected as experimental materials.In the experiment,participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI)while viewing either appearance feedback words or character feedback words ostensibly chosen by their classmates in a previous evaluation task.Participants also rated their state self-esteem in response to each feedback word.Behavioral results showed that participants reported higher state self-esteem following the character feedback irrespective of valence,compared with the appearance feedback.Moreover,fMRI results demonstrated the dorsal striatum was more activated in response to positive character feedback and the lateral prefrontal cortex was more activated in response to the negative character feedback compared to the appearance feedback.Moreover,the activation of dorsal striatum was significantly correlated with the difference scores of people's reported state self-esteem after receiving positive character feedback versus that after receiving positiveappearance feedback,and the activation of LPFC was significantly correlated with the difference scores of people's reported state self-esteem after receiving negative character feedback versus that after receiving negative appearance feedback.This study shows that in the process of self-evaluation,compared with physical appearance,psychological character plays a more important role in the individual's self-esteem,which to some extent indicates that the individual's self-esteem is more dependent on the individual's psychological character.In the process of the feedback of others,whether positive or negative character feedback led to a higher state self-esteem,and positive character feedback induced strongeractivation of dorsalstriatal,while negative character feedback induced strongeractivation of the lateral prefrontal cortex,this may indicate that,a reward-related mechanism when processing the positive social feedback and a self-critical processing when processing the negativesocial feedback on an important aspect of self-concept(e.g.,character-related).