PSYC
Chapter 2: Self-Concept
Female #1: Me personally, I have, like, high self-
esteem at times. But other times it’s just low. And I
guess that’s normal. But I don’t consider myself, like,
up there all the time. And I get it from my friends,
ecause they’ll tell me “Oh, that looks nice on you,”
or “Oh, you can do this. I know you can. I’ve seen
you do it; you’ve done it before. “ You would think I
would get it from my family since they always
encouraged me, but I guess friends are more
powerful than family, even though that’s hard to
elieve at times. But they are more powerful. Their
words, their actions. Because they’re your age and
they see a lot of things you’re going through.
Female #2: There’s some parts of me that I’m happy
with but, like—I mean, I guess this is normal for
every teenage girl. I’m not very happy with my, like,
appearance or whatever.And I know this sounds
eally shallow, but I get it from like, the opposite sex
too. Like, if a guy tells me that I look pretty. Like, that
like puts me up there so high. I’m, like, “Oh my
gosh,” you know. Like, whereas like, if my girlfriend
said it, I’m like “Oh, that’s awesome,” but they’re just
girls. Like when you family tells you, like, you did
something good, like “Oh, good job,” it’s like “I’m
your daughter. You have to say that.”
Female #3:It doesn’t matter who says it to me, who,
like, tells you “Oh, you did a really good job on that.”
Like, it just—it helps you. Like, it could come from a
person walking down the street, like, and they just
smile at you. That like just makes—sometimes that
just makes your whole day a lot better. Like, wow.
But also sometimes with your friends, if they tell you
something that they—they’re just giving you their
honest opinion that they think you can’t do it. Maybe
just like that one little word saying “I don’t think you
can do it.” It can
ing you down so much. In the
same way that someone else can just say “I know
you can do it,” it can just
ing you up so high. So
everything has its ups and downs. I think if we lived,
like, in the past, when girls were told, like, “You can’t
get a job. You can’t become a doctor.” Like, that
would it would
ing down our self-esteem. But since
now we’re being told that “You can do this” and “It
doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter how
you look like. You can do it,”it’s a lot easier for
people.
Questions
1. If you were tasked with creating a program to improve teens’ self-concept, where would you
target your resources? What sort of program would you create?
2.
Which of the following was NOT listed in the video as an influence on the teens’ self-concept?
•
people on the street
•
peers
•
media sources
•
opposite sex
3.
The teens in the video thought that self-esteem for girls was
•
higher in previous generations.
•
lower in previous generations.
•
about the same in previous generations.
•
i
elevant.