Negative Affect/ Self - esteem • A project by Ryan McQueen, Daniel Shelton, and Mason Grine
Definitions
• Negative affect: a personality variable that involves the experience of negative
emotions and poor self-concept.
• Self-Esteem: reflect a person's overall emotional evaluation of his or her own
worth. It is a judgment of oneself as well as an attitude toward the self.
Affect/Esteem and Education
• Affect, behavior, and cognitive factors.
• Are these three factors present in education?
• Does a teacher deal with any of these in a day?
Research
• Negative Affect Syndrome (NAS): a state of
psychological difficulty suffering
characterized by the preponderance of
negative moods and emotions that impair
adaptive functioning and well-being.
• ROSENBERG SELF-ESTEEM SCALE
Connection to Classroom Management
• Negative outlook, distress, anxiety, dissatisfaction.
• Negative affectivity subsumes a variety of negative emotions, including anger,
contempt, disgust, guilt, and fear.
Identifying Students
• Some traits of negative affect/ low self-esteem:
• Perfectionism
• Resignation to failure
• Defensive when asked for input
• Poor communication skills
• Verses amotivation
• Low self-esteem
• Autonomy—Responsibility
• Relatedness—Relationships
• Competence—Belonging
Motivation
• Optimally challenging
tasks
• Self-determination
• Meeting psychological
needs (autonomy,
relatedness, and
competence)
Motivation Continued
• Setting goals and
benchmarks
• Track growth that students
can see
• Curbing “catastrophic
thinking”
What can teachers do?
• Making positive phone calls
• Turning mistakes into
learning opportunities
More Strategies for Teachers
1. Identify triggers for negative affect and the responses and train the individual
to respond in the opposite manner. Thus, if a stimuli triggers anxiety, train them
in relaxation. If a situation triggers depressive shutdown, train them in
behavioral activation.
2. Address avoidance via exposure; the way new learning emerges is via contact
with the feared stimuli that produces a more adaptive and habituated response.
Thus, if an individual is afraid of a bridge, they need to experience being on a
bridge in a way that fosters mastery rather than panic. This is true of internal
stimuli as well, which bridges much behavioral and psychodynamic work.
3. Identify beliefs that over-exaggerate future threat.
Collaboration
• Work together with the community! Is the
student involved in a club at school? Does
the student attend the Boys and Girls Club?
Does the student attend a local church? How
is the student’s home life?
BIBLIOGRAPHYHTTP://WWW.PSYCHOLOGYTODAY.COM/BLOG/THEORY-KNOWLEDGE/201308/NEGATIVE-AFFECT-SYNDROMEHTTP://SPL.STANFORD.EDU/PDFS/2010%20RAY%20EMOTION.PDF
Witter, M. (2013). I Can Climb the Mountain.
Educational Leadership, 71(1), 61-64.
McLeod, S. A. (2012). Low Self Esteem.
Retrieved from
http://www.simplypsychology.org/self-
esteem.html
HTTP://WWW.FETZER.ORG/SITES/DEFAULT/FILES/IMAGES/STORIES/PDF/SELFMEASURES/SELF_MEASURES_FOR_SELF-ESTEEM_ROSENBERG_SELF-ESTEEM.PDF