Investigation of Womens Self Esteem and Relationship Status

Amelia Farmer Queens University of Charlotte

Introduction Facebook and other outlets put emphasis on relationship status and make them public for all to see, therefore young adults probably pay more attention to it than previously. Pettijohn, Naples, and McDermott (2010) found that women have lower self esteem overall, and are more easily embarrassed than men. Women in relationships indicated more relationship contingency than women who were not in relationships, meaning their self esteem is derived from romantic relationships (Sanchez, Good, Kwang, and Saltzman (2008) Women who were in a serious, long term relationship had a significantly greater self esteem than those who were not in a relationship at all Long (1983) Purpose : To determine if womens self esteem is dependent on whether or not they are in a relationship. Hypotheses I hypothesize that the women who are not in a long term relationship will have a lower self esteem than women who are in a relationship. I hypothesize that of the women who are in a long term relationship, those with higher trust in their partner will have higher self esteem than those who have low trust with their partner. Methods Participants A total of 80 women participated in this study. 39 of these women classified themselves as not in a relationship while 36 stated they were in a relationship lasting 4+ months. Procedure The participants completed a questionnaire consisting of items on relationship satisfaction, self esteem, body esteem, and trust in relationships. Materials The questionnaire consisted of six scales. The following four were completed by both relationship status groups: The Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale; the score range on this scale is 0-30 (Rosenberg 1965) The Current Thoughts Scale, which measures state self esteem. (Heatherton & Polivy, 1991) The Body Esteem Scale (Franzoi & Shields, 1984) Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffin, 1985) The Trust Scale was completed by the long term relationship group (Rempel, Holmes & Zanna, 1985) The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support was completed by the no relationship group (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet & Farley, 1988) Results

Relationship Status and Self Esteem

17.8 17.6 Self Estee m 17.4 17.2 17 16.8 16.6 16.4 not in relationship in relationship 16.8571 Series1 17.6286

Trust v. Self Esteem

140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 0 5 10 15 Trust 20 25 30

Rosenber g

Summary of Results Hypothesis 1: Women who were in a relationship had a slightly lower self esteem than those not in a relationship, but it was not significant. Hypothesis 2: There was no correlation found between relationship trust and self esteem. There was significance found in the correlation between self esteem and satisfaction with life. (p<.000, r=.607) There was significance found in the correlation between current thoughts and body esteem. (p<.000, r=.597) A significant negative correlation was found between self esteem and body esteem (p<.000, r=.577) A significant negative correlation was found between self esteem and current thoughts (p<.000, r=.744)

Self Esteem v. Satisfaction

30 Self Esteem 25 20 15 10 5 0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 Satisfaction

Current Thoughts v. Body Esteem

Current Thoughts 200 150 100 Series1 50 0 0 20 40 60 Body Esteem 80 100 120

Conclusions This study did not confirm the findings from previous research. The positive correlation between self esteem and satisfaction makes sense since both scales were related to self esteem. The negative correlations found between the self esteem scale and the body esteem and current thoughts scales shows that the scales are probably not reliable. In future studies, only one self esteem scale should be used and a scale on relationship satisfaction as opposed to trust should be used. In this study, long term relationship was defined as a relationship lasting 4+ months. In future studies, the length of relationship could be longer and more detailed. Overall, this study did not find any new information, but it is still an important topic due to the information found in the background research.