The Role Of Religion On Self-Esteem

Teen-agers, take this test. Choose among the following for your responses: disagree, mostly disagree, neither, mostly agree or agree.

1. I take a positive attitude toward myself.

2. I feel I am a person of worth, on an equal plane.

3. I am able to do things as well as most other people.

4. On the whole I am satisfied with myself.

5. I feel I do not have much to be proud of.

6. Sometimes I think I am no good at all.

7. I feel I can't do anything right.

8. I feel my life isn't useful.

Incorporated into a report, student reaction to this test was titled, "Monitoring the Future, a Continuing Study of the Lifestyles and Values of Youth." This test was given in 1990 to high school seniors across the U.S. Conducted by the University of Michigan Institute of Social Research, the study questioned 17,142 high school seniors from 111 public schools and 22 private schools.

To cover six different topic areas, they created six different versions of the questionnaire. It contained eight items on self-esteem and was given to 2,184 high school seniors - 1,077 males and 1,107 females. The racial makeup included 1,912 Caucasian and 272 African-American seniors.

Yong Dai of the Department of Psychology at the University of Louisiana - Shreveport presented his analysis of the data to this year's annual convention of the American Psychological Association. The data was first released to the public in 1994. Dai explained that, as a national sample, this data set is quite recent and gives a good up-to-date picture of contemporary American youth.

Dai analyzed the data for the effects of gender, race, religious involvement, and political orientation on self-esteem. On religion, youths could answer "never attending religious services" (not involved, "rarely attending religious services" (rarely involved), "attending religious services once or twice a month" (involved) and "attending religious services once a week or more" (very involved).

Gender differences: Male and female adolescents were quite similar in their responses to the four positive items on self-esteem. However, females showed less disagreement with the two negative items, "Sometimes I think that I am no good at all," and "I feel that I can't do anything right."

Religious Involvement: Those teen-agers with strong religious involvement scored higher on the four positive self-esteem items than those teen-agers with no or less religious involvement.

There was an interaction effect with religious involvement and gender. For males and females, the more religious they were the more likely they were to agree on the positive statements of self-esteem. Males who were moderately involved with religion showed the most disagreement with the negative statements. Females who were very involved with religion showed the most disagreement with the negative statements than all other groups.

Race and religion: When race is brought into the picture, the positive effects for religion were the same for African-American and Caucasians. In addition, African-American teens who were not religiously involved scored much less agreement with the four items of positive self-esteem than other groups of African-Americans. They were very similar on the negative answers.

Political orientation: Whether teen-agers judged themselves liberal or conservative made no difference on their self-esteem.

What does this mean? Dai offers the following explanations:

• Concerning males not regarding themselves negatively, Dai believes that it may be because, according to traditional gender roles, having negative attitudes toward oneself is less acceptable for males.

• On the other hand, he refers to other research that shows teen-age females are more vulnerable to issues of appearance, body image, eating disorders and depression. One study has shown that a female teen's self-esteem progressively decreases from early adolescence to late adolescence to early adulthood. Dai believes his study provides further evidence that female adolescents have lower self-esteem than male adolescents.

Regarding religion, Dai feels his findings show that religious teachings and participation help teens have positive images of themselves, much more than those youths who had no religious involvement. The impact of religion is most dramatic in helping adolescent females deal with the stress and anxiety of growing up in an appearance conscious culture.

What do you think, parents? Taking your children to church really does pay off for all teens - male and female. Not going to church is a big negative for African-American teens. Very religious young women do best in coping with pressure - especially when compared to other females or to males.

Teens, how did you score? Been to church lately?