Abstract
To learn the relationship between Self-esteem and academic performance in America, students in America from diverse races were given questionnaires to fill. Data were collected from 4 African-American students, 4 Latino-Hispanic students, and 4 white-Caucasian students giving a total of 12 students. From each group of the students, a correlation was reported, giving a total of three correlations. Finally, the correlations were reported between self-esteem and GPA (Grade Point Average).
Philosophers have argued that international self-esteem should be connected to performance in academics. Nonetheless, studies have reported higher self-esteem among white students than African American students, but have failed to find global self-esteem among African American students. Scholars such as Steele have tried to clarify this enigma. He did so by proposing that African American children disconnect their self-esteem from academic results, thus protecting them from failure.
Introduction
The experiment done established the hypothesis that members of undesirably stereotyped groups psychologically disengage their self-esteem from the response received in stereotype-relevant fields. The experiment considered the extent to which minor instantaneously amongst African Americans is the cause of lasting disengagement from intellect tests initiated by briefing racial typecast.
Disengagement is defined as “a defensive detachment of self-esteem from outcomes in a particular domain, such as feelings of self-worth is not dependent on successes or failures in that domain”. It occurs in several ways, for instance, Steele (1992, 1997) stated that when people are susceptible to social depression and negative stereotypes in certain fields, they may redefine their self-concepts in such a way that the areas are no longer a basis of their self-evaluation, a procedure referred to as misidentification.
On the other hand, individuals may disengage their self-esteem from a given field is when they trust the response or results they receive in that field are not valid indicators of their value or capability (Crocker & Major, 1989; Major& Crocker, 1993). Psychological disengagement occurs principally, but not completely, in circumstances in which fairly poor performance is experienced or expected.
Self-esteem can also be noted to disengage from situations whereby response is supposed to be prejudiced against the branded. For instance, the rejection of African American students by their white peer counterparts was more possibly related to chauvinism and was less probable to show a drop in self-esteem, if they thought that their counterparts knew their race than if they believed the peers could not see them and presumably knew their race.
On receiving an affirmative response, African American students still accredited this to favoritism if their counterparts could or could not see them. In this case, different trends of self-esteem were noted. For instance, the self-esteem of former students decreased while that of recent students increased exponentially.
African Americans were victims of many negative responses from their peers. For example, African American students were exposed to bigotry, chauvinism, discernment, and many more which affected their intellect. Their weakening is based on their intellectual ability and academic performance. The negative implications attached to African Americans over time, for instance, prejudice and biases, is the principal cause of the disengagement of self-esteem from an academic performance by African American students.
From the findings and studies, we were able to satisfy the three hypotheses. First, the whites had a positive relationship between self-esteem and GPA. Secondly, from the black participants, there was no clear relationship between self-esteem and GPA which also applied to the Latino.
Method
Participants
Data were collected from 12 students who represented a total of 3 races. The races considered for analysis were African American, Latino/Hispanic, and whites/Caucasian
Design
During the study, the following variables were used:
- Sex. The sex of the participants was chosen by a self-report measure, taken on different occasions. From the analysis, females are likely to have lower self-esteem than men for all races.
- Race. Participants who reported being African American, Latino/Hispanic, and whites/Caucasian were chosen for the analysis. Whites tend to have high self-esteem followed by Latino African Americans.
- Socioeconomic status (SES). This was used to designate family SES. The base-year (1988) SES combination score was used in this study.
- Grade point average (GDA).
Material
The students used questionnaires with questions to fill. They used their pens and the school facilities.
Procedure
Students were given questionnaires to fill. The results were then tabulated according to gender and race. Participants were run in groups of three with a minimum of four in each race present. Sessions were run by males and female experimenters in equal proportions comprised of the three races. After briefing the participants, each was assigned a questionnaire to fill.
Results
African American Correlation
Hispanic/Latino Correlation
White/Caucasian Correlation
From the results above, it is clear those African American students scored lower in the measure of achievement than the whites and Latino/Hispanic students did. The result compares to previous studies and thus supports the first expectations of misidentification theory.
Secondly, from the results, it is clear that African American students do not have lower self-esteem than do white and Latino/Hispanic students. From the tables above, African American students exhibited higher international self-esteem than both whites and African American colleagues. The findings replicate earlier reported observed results.
Finally, correlations between self-esteem and academic achievements should not originally differ along with tribal groups, but show a declining trend for African American students over time.
Discussion
We were able to achieve our hypothesis. First, black children appeared to have higher, rather than lower, self-esteem than whites. Secondly, girls of all races established lower self-esteem than do boys, with white girls revealing the lowest self-esteem of all. Likewise, among black children, those from ruined relations fare poorer in terms of self-esteem in desegregated than in segregated schools.
The earlier study showed that the best interpreter of GPA was academic self-concept. The outcomes support results from previous studies which give credit to academic self-concept as the top GPA predictors. It also proposes that students who are optimistic towards school and their school abilities are highly probable to achieve better grades in class than the students with a negative attitude.
Another academic performance variable taken in the research was the score on an oral segment of the GRE. It suggested that students who had more internalized approaches were also more expected to score higher on the GRE compared with those with less affected attitudes.
References
Mboya, M. M. (1986). Black adolescents: A descriptive study of their self-concepts and academicachievement. Adolescence, 21, 689-696
Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995).Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance ofAfrican-Americans.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 797-81
Williams, R. L. (1971). Abuses and misuses in testing Black children. The Counseling Psychologist 25.
Yanico, B. J., Swanson, J. L., &Tokar, D. M. (1994). A psychometric investigation of the Black Racial Identity Attitude Scale–Form B. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 44(2)