The Effect Of Self-esteem On Active Inhibition Of Negative Memory In High School Students

High school students will encounter all kinds of negative events,such as earthquakes,floods,family divorces,bullying,academic setbacks and so on.The intrusion of negative events can induce a variety of psychological diseases,such as anxiety,depression,post-traumatic stress disorder and so on.How to better restrain the intrusion of negative memory plays an important role in the maintenance of high school students’ mental health.The researchers found that the intervention of active memory inhibition can improve individuals’ ability to control negative memory intrusion and reduce the frequency of negative memory intrusion.In real life,we found that some high school students easily forgotten all about the negative events parts,and some people have a lot of things can not forget,individual differences could affect the negative memory active suppression,self-esteem,as one of the core factors of individual personality,self-esteem level of different individuals in treatment of negative event and state is very different.Is it possible that,compared with individuals with low self-esteem,individuals with high self-esteem are more likely to have positive emotional experience and positive self-evaluation by suppressing the intrusion of negative memories and extracting positive memories to maintain their self-worth due to their better security protection mechanism? If individuals with high self-esteem do have a better ability to inhibit negative memories,we can enhance the active inhibition of negative memories by mobilizing the positive factors in individual self-esteem.These questions remain to be studied.In order to explore the above problems,this study investigated the effect of self-esteem on the active inhibition of negative memory in high school students from a questionnaire survey and two experimental studies.In the first study,questionnaires were used to examine whether high self-esteem individuals’ active memory inhibition ability was stronger than low self-esteem individuals.In the second study,a mixed experimental design of 2(instruction: remember and forget)×2(gender: neutral,negative)×2(group: high self-esteem,low self-esteem)was used to investigate the effects of different self-esteem levels on the active inhibition ability of negative memory.In study 3,a mixed experimental design of 2(instruction: remember,forget)×2(gender:neutral,negative)×2(group: positive self-priming group,control group)was used to explore the effect of positive self on active inhibition in priming self-esteem.The results of the first study showed that there was a significant positive correlation between self-esteem and active inhibition of memory,and high self-esteem had higher active inhibition than low self-esteem,which indicated that high self-esteem had stronger active inhibition than low self-esteem.The second research found that high self-esteem is to forget the negative project performance was significantly lower than low self-esteem,and high self-esteem on directional forgotten ability person’s ability to actively forget negative word than low self-esteem is high,the results show that the high self-esteem for negative memories stronger inhibition ability actively,it is easier to prevent negative memories into.In the third study,we found that positive self-priming group had stronger inhibition of negative words than the control group,and the ability of directed forgetting was also stronger than the control group.The results showed that positive self-priming group had inhibitory effect on negative memory.In conclusion,from the perspective of individual differences,this study explored the influence of self-esteem on active inhibition of high school students.The results revealed that high self-esteem high school students for active inhibition of negative memory ability is better than low self-esteem of high school students,and confirmed the high self-esteem individuals often in our daily life can call more positive factors to restrain negative memories into,this part also illustrates the active inhibition to negative memory has positive significance for people.This study also provides evidence and ideas for the education of high school students’ self-esteem and active memory inhibition ability.When high school students encounter negative events,their self-esteem level can be improved to better restrain the intrusion of negative memories,and then they can face life and study more positively and optimistically.