The purpose of this study was to examine whether self-encouragement plays a mediating role in a relationship between adolescents' personality and their rejection sensitivity. The research questions were set as follow.
First, what are the differences...
The purpose of this study was to examine whether self-encouragement plays a mediating role in a relationship between adolescents' personality and their rejection sensitivity. The research questions were set as follow.
First, what are the differences in the five factors of personality, rejection sensitivity, and self-encouragement according to demographic and sociological characteristics of adolescents?
Second, what are the correlations among the five factors of adolescents' personality, rejection sensitivity, and self- encouragement?
Third, does self-encouragement have mediating effect in the relationship between each personality factor and rejection sensitivity?
For this investigation, 320 adolescents were drawn from the first grade of middle school to the third grade of high school in Korea. 314 responses were chosen as valid answers.
To measure personality factors, the Child Q-set reconstructed by Hae-Young Ha(2014) was revised. To measure rejection sensitivity, the Korean version of the Rejection Sensitivity Scale(RSQ) developed by Downey and Feldman(1996) was adapted and validated by Bok-dong Lee(2000) was modified and supplemented to serve middle and high school students.
To measure self-encouragement, the Self-Encouragement-Disappointment Scale developed by Roh An-young and Jeong Min(2007) was modified. The collected data were analyzed using the IBM SPSS 25.0 program. Descriptive statistics, one-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation analysis, and regression analysis were performed, and Sobel’s Test was run to verify the significance of mediating effect. The results were as follows.
First, in the case of five factors of personality and self-encouragement, there were no statistically significant differences according to gender and residential area, but a significant difference by grade. Rejection sensitivity did not show statistically significant difference by grade and gender, but showed difference by residential area.
Second, in consequence of confirming the correlations between the personality factors of adolescents, rejection sensitivity, and self-encouragement, self-encouragement was positive related to personality fators: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, and agreeableness. but negatively related to neurosis. There also was a negative correlation between self-encouragement and rejection sensitivity.
Third, Sobel’s test showed that self-encouragement had partial mediating effects in the relationships between the each five different personality factors and rejection sensitivity.
These results suggest that self-encouragement be promoted for the effective counseling for the adolescents with difficulties in interpersonal relationships.