Abstract
This study investigated attachment style and self evaluation as
predictors of emotional adjustment among adolescents. Participants were two hundred
(200) secondry school students of Government secondry school and Holy rosary
collage comprising of fifty (50) males and one hundred and fifty (150) females
were selected using purposive sampling technique. Their ages ranged between 14-19
years with a mean age of 31.86 years (SD = 8.66). Cross sectional design was
adopted. Three instruments were used for data collection Emotional Adjustment Scale, Attachment Style Classification
Questionnaire and Core Self Evaluation Scale (CSES). Two hypotheses were tested. Hierarchical multiple regression was the
main statistic used for data analysis. Result of a Hierarchical multiple regression
analysis showed that attachment style was a positively significant predictor of
emotional adjustment among adolescents (β = .17,
p< .01),
accounting for 28% significant variance as a predictor
of emotional adjustment among adolescents (∆R2 = .28, p<
.01). The result also showed that self
evaluation was not a significant predictor of emotional adjustment among
adolescents, although it accounted for 3% of the variance in worker’s burnout
(∆R2 = .03). However, the 2 predictor variables in the regression
model contributed 5% to the explanation of the variance in worker’s burnout
(total AR2 = .05). The implications of these findings were
discussed, and suggestions for further studies were equally made.
CHAPTER
ONE
INTRODUCTION
Adolescence
is a complex period that may involve
stress which makes adolescent to
face many challenges in life. It is a transition period during which adolescents
learn many new habits, behaviours and give up some old habits. Sometimes
becoming an easy prey to emotional instability and may exhibit violent behaviours at home and at school; due
to lack of control in expressing views and opinions, lack of understanding their
parents and teachers. All these pose a major threat to the positive development
in adolescents. (Rajeswari & Jeryda Gnanajane
Eljo, 2013).
For many
parents, adolescent period can seem like
a whirlwind of rapidly changing emotions. In fact, some earlier theories about
adolescent development proposed that "storm and stress" was to be
expected, and suggested adolescents characteristically tended to over-react to
everyday situations. However, more recent research refutes the above as
outdated notion. Developmental experts (Larson & Ham, 1993) have since
learned that what may appear as "storm and stress" is actually the
natural outcome of youth learning to cope with a much larger array of new and
unfamiliar situations..
According to Sharma (2016) emotions may hamper the studies of students. In
some adolescents emotions may lead to crimes, because people lose reasoning
power and their ability to control behaviour is hampered. Hence, emotional
control and management is very essential for an adjusted life. Researchers have
clarified the role of parents in psychological adjustment of adolescents.
Specifically, mother’s negative emotional responses contribute in developing
sensitivity to negative emotional responses which, in turn, deteriorate the
perception of positive emotion and reduce the capability of expecting positive
emotional responsiveness in societal interactions (Sheeber, Hops, & Davis,
2001; Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers,& Robinson, 2007).
Acoording to Anu (2014) When needs arise, especially in new or
changed surroundings, they impel interpersonal activity meant to satisfy those
needs. In this way, adolescents increase their familiarity and comfort with
their environments, and they come to expect that their needs will be met in the
future through their social networks, and psychological changes. A sequence of
adjustment begins when a need is felt and ends when it is satisfied. Kulshrestha (1979) explained that the
adjustment process is a way in which the individual attempts to deal with stress,
tensions, conflicts, and meet his or her needs. In this process, the individual
also makes efforts to maintain harmonious relationships with the environment.
Adjustment, in psychology, refers to
the behavioral process by which humans such as adolescents and other animals maintain
equilibrium among their various needs or between their needs and the obstacles
of their environmental adjustment
(Searle & Ward 1990). This implies that the individual and the environment
are two important factors in adjustment (Ugodulunwa & Anakwe 2012).
Emotional
adjustment (also
referred to as personal adjustment
or psychological adjustment) is
the maintenance of emotional equilibrium in the face of internal and external
stressors. This is facilitated by cognitive processes of acceptance and
adaptation. An example would be maintaining emotional control and coping behavior in the face of an identity crisis This capacity is an important aspect of mental health and where it is compromised, or not developed, psychopathology and mental disorder can result. There are many instances where even highly
intelligent people fail to manage their emotions and some average intelligent
persons manage their emotions effectively and harmoniously, (Sharma,
2016).
One varieable related to emotional
adjustment is attachment style
Attachment
refers to an intense emotional relationship between parent and child that begins
at birth and endures over a long period of time. The earliest steps of social
development center on the very first human bond that is between infants and
caregiver usually the mother. Indeed this bond known as attachment between
infants and their caregiver is sometimes said to lay the foundations for all
later relationships in life. From a very early age children are learning about
the social world developing their expectations of how others will behave, and
learning to read the signals that others provide. Across these same months
children are forming their first social relationship. This is evident as infants
begin to show a pattern known as separation anxiety in which they become
visibly upset when their mother or care giver leaves the room. This is a
powerful indication that the infant has formed an attachment to the care giver,
that is a strong enduring emotional bond and which follow till adolescents.
At infant mothers provide the children
with food, warmth and physical protection forming basis for attachment indicating
that adolescents beginning from infants form attachment that helps their emotional adjustment. But in
contrast attachment seems to grow out of psychological comfort the mother provides an
adolescent during infancy. The idea that
attachment depends on comfort was central to the thinking of a British
psychiatrist John Bowlby, who argued that adolescents become attached to a
caregiver because the adult provides a secure base for the adolescent; a
relationship in which the adolescent feels safe and protected. Adolescents use
the secure base as a haven in times of stress or treat and according to Bowlby
this provides the adolescent with the sense of safety to explore and learn
because they know that if the going gets tough they can always return to the
secure base (Waters &Cummings,2000).
Bowlby (1988) suggested that
when children develop a secure
attachment to their primary caregiver, they develop an internal working model and sense of self worth that
serves as guide for social interaction and contribute to positive experiences
in their relationship with others.
Taking a relational perspective in
the connection between parents and adolescents, it is crucial to determine how
the attachment feelings obtained from parental attachment are associated with
emotional well being and adjustment among adolescents (Ercan , 2010). Attachment to parent in
adolescence has been explicitly considered in many studies that provide
empirical evidence for the link between parental attachment and psychological
well-being and adjustment in adolescence. For instance, secure individuals are
more optimistic in the face of threats, more comfortable, seeking support when
under stress, use more constructive coping strategies, and have more trusting
beliefs about the goodwill of others (Shaver & Hazan, 1993). In addition,
Armsden & Greenberg (1987) revealed that parental attachment contributed
positively to self-esteem and life satisfaction and negatively to a measure of
anxiety, depression and feelings of alienation, and also appeared to enhance
adolescents’ well-being by increasing their self-esteem and diminishing
feelings of depression.
Researchers
like Ainsworth & Bell, (1970); Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, &Wall, (1978)
developed a straightforward procedure which is known as strange situation for
assessing attachment. They developed a system for
identifying and describing individual differences in attachment among mothers
and infants. They found that infants differed in the way they handled the stress
of being left alone by their mother in a strange situation. A laboratory room equipped
with a host of novel toys The majority of infants called securely attached, became
somewhat subdued or distressed in their mother's absence but expressed warm, relieved
greetings and were quickly soothed by her when she
returned (Ainsworth et al,1978). The remaining infants who Ainsworth et al (1978)
called insecurely attached coped in two strikingly different ways. Some labeled anxious-ambivalent protested and
cried when their mothers left as well as
while they were gone. They acknowledged their mother's return and sought to be held
but surprisingly, (given their obvious distress at their departure) continued to
seem angry and distraught when they tried to calm them.
The third group, called avoidant, seemed
undisturbed by their mother's departure and cool if not disinterested. When the
mothers returned they did not seek physical cuddling or comforting and appeared
to be prematurely self reliant. Several studies of adults reviewed by Shaver& Clark, (1994)
have found that anxious-ambivalent infants are highly expressive of anger. Anxious-ambivalent
infants are also more likely to express anxiety and distress, if, for example, they
are briefly left alone by mother during the
strange situation test. Thus, it is expected that they may turn into anxious adolescents, and compared with their secure
and avoidant counterparts, they are expected to report higher levels of anger and
hostility, as well as higher levels of other negative emotions such as anxiety and
depression. Theoretically, avoidants are also distressed, but they have learned
to deny or suppress negative emotions, especially anger, because in early childhood,
emotional expression increased the likelihood of caregiver rejection (Main &Weston,1982).
A
growing number of researchers have become interested in the framework that
parent-adolescent attachment relationship is related to well-being and adjustment
of adolescents. A body of literature indicates
that secure attachment relationships are associated with consistent and
long-term benefits for psychological well being and adjustment. For instance, a
longitudinal study showed that adolescents with histories of secure attachment
patterns were more competent, emotionally healthy, self-confident, and socially
skilled than anxiously attached children (Elicker, Englund, & Sroufe,
1992). Similarly, another longitudinal
investigation was carried out to determine the role of parental attachment and
its effects on adjustment (Doyle & Markiewicz, 2005). In the study,
perceived parental attachment was evaluated among adolescents from 13 years of
age to 15 years of age and various aspects of adjustment such as depressive
symptoms, self-esteem…etc. The results of the study revealed that attachment to
parents was associated to adjustment with regard to levels of internalizing
problems, self-esteem, and reported school achievement. Thus, researchers
concluded that attachment security influences adolescents’ adjustment.
Self evaluation which is also known as appraisal in psychology is linked
to emotional adjustment it states that emotions
are extracted from our evaluations (appraisals or estimates) of events that
cause specific reactions in different adolescents. Essentially, people’s
appraisal of a situation causes an emotional, or affective, response based on that appraisal. An example is going on a first date. If the date is perceived as
positive, people might feel happy, joy, giddiness, excitement, and/or anticipation, because they appraised this event as one that could have
positive long-term effects, that is starting a new relationship, engagement,
or even marriage.
On the other hand, if the date is perceived negatively, then our emotions, as a
result, might include dejection, sadness,
emptiness,
or fear.
(Scherer, Schorr & Johnstone, 2001).
Reasoning
and understanding of one's emotional reaction becomes
important for future appraisals as well. The important aspect of the appraisal
theory is that it accounts for individual variances of emotional reactions to
the same event.
Bucholtz said, “Remind them constantly about how they can achieve anything that they
want to,” and Ryan emphasized the importance
of “giving them enough love and praise
so that they feel good about themselves, and then they can
go and master the world.” (Miller, Wang, Sandel, & Cho,2002 p 23 )
This quote epitomizes the popular
belief that feeling good about self is a key to fulfilling one’s potentials.
Accordingly, praise and positive feedback should be generously dispensed to
children, students, employees, colleagues, and friends to make them feel good about themselves. This folk theory,
aside from being widely
publicized in media of public
culture, is also widely practiced (Miller,
Fung, & Mintz, 1996; Miller, Wiley, Fung, & Liang, 1997; Brophy, 1981;
Koestner, Zuckerman, & Koestner, 1987). Many parents also feel compelled to make their
children feel good about themselves by praising their abilities (Mueller &
Dweck,1996).
Many researchers have proven that
the life of an adolescent is filled with stress and storm which makes them face many challenges in life like how to make
friends and keep them, how to relate with the outside world and how they are
able to manage their failure or success in school, and the management of all
these and more depends on their attachment style that is the kind of
relationship they had with their caregiver or the way they perceived their
caregiver at earlier years. Emotional adjustment can be achieved among adolescents
through proper enlightening of parents or caregivers and secondary school
teachers, also the issue of attachment style and self evaluation needs to be
put into account in order to know how to handle issues or deviant behaviors
that rise among adolescents due to maladjustment of emotions and also to know
how to help such adolescents adjust properly.
Statement of the Problem
Despite previous research findings some adolescents still find it
difficult to adapt to their environment and relate freely with others both in
school and at home. Particularly their
performance in school suffers, implying
that the main cause of the problem have not been found. For example, there are
some maladaptive behaviors among
adolescents which probably is as a result of emotional adjustment. Therefore this
study seeks to find out if attachment style and self evaluation are
contributing factors to the emotional adjustment of an adolescent.
Therefore the present study aims at
addressing the following problems;
1. Would Attachment style statistically significantly
predict emotional adjustment among adolescents?
2. Would self evaluation statistically
significantly predict emotional adjustment among adolescents?
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of the present study is
to find out whether:
1. Secure attachment style would
statistically significantly predict emotional adjustment among adolescents.
2. Self evaluation would statistically
significantly predict emotional adjustment among adolescents.
Significance of the
Study
The study have both
theoretical and practical significance.
Theoretically
the present study contributes to the knowledge of the existing literature on
the importance of proper emotional adjustment among adolescents and teenagers. Also
the problem of deviant behavior, poor performance in class and inability to
relate well with others due to poor adjustment to emotions would be solved.
Practically
it will assist parents, caregivers, secondary school teachers adolescents and
guidance and counselors to enlighten and educate students on how to properly
manage their emotions in other to reduce the rate of stress that poor emotional
adjustment can cause.
Operational
Definition of Terms
Attachment style:
Attachment refers to a bond existing between adolescents and parents which
defines their relationship both with parents and others,which can bear a
positive or negative effect.
Self evaluation:
it is defined as the way a person perceives or values oneself and how one
assumes or thinks others see or values one.
Emotional adjustment: this
is defined as how an individual comes to terms with his psychological needs in
various circumstances in order to attain emotional equilibrium or balance.
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