Research on the influence of college students’ participation in sports activities on their sense of inferiority based on self-esteem and general self-efficacy

Abstract

College students need to face various problems and conflicts, and are prone to many negative emotions, such as depression, low self-esteem, social anxiety, low sense of belonging, lack of self-identity, and so on. The generation of these bad emotions will bring unexpected negative effects to college students. Taking Chinese college students as the research object, this study analyzes the influence of sports participation on inferiority. Furthermore, we explored whether self-esteem and general self-efficacy mediated the relationship between physical activity and inferiority. In this study, 115 students were selected to conduct the experiment for 12 weeks. After reliability testing, the collected data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of variance to verify the research model. The results show that sports has a significant positive correlation with the reduction of college students’ inferiority complex. What is important in this model is that self-esteem and general self-efficacy are enhanced during physical activity and decreased during inferiority complex. In addition, this study created three sports situations: competition group, entertainment group and control group. The comparison results show that competitive sports situation is better than leisure sports situation in terms of the influence on college students’ inferiority complex. Through the theoretical and empirical research on college students’ inferiority complex, it is concluded that sports is an effective means to reduce college students’ inferiority complex.

Increased physical activity, higher educational attainment, and the use of mobility aid are associated with self-esteem in people with physical disabilities

“…These two effects are now considered the most established findings in the SE literature (Trzesniewski et al, 2013;Orth and Robins, 2014). These studies also suggest that gender differences are determined, at least in part, by universal mechanisms that reflect both universal sociocultural factors and genetic biological processes that transcend culture and context (Gao et al, 2020;Liu, 2022). Moderate global SE, which was slightly higher than that in our study [2.997 (0.516) vs. 3.14 (0.56)], was also reported in 292 Saudi people with disabilities, with a clear male superiority over females.…”

Bridging internalized HIV stigma and depressive symptoms among people living with HIV in China during the COVID-19 pandemic: a network analysis

“…This sense of inferiority could subsequently trigger or exacerbate depressive symptoms. Inferiority could potentially lead to negative self-esteem and lack of self-worth, key aspects often associated with depressive states (59)(60)(61)(62)(63)(64). On the other hand, "gloomy feelings" serving as a bridge node indicates that these symptoms are not only a consequence of internalized HIV stigma, but could also potentially feed back into the internalized HIV stigma cycle.…”

The effect of subjective exercise experience on anxiety disorder in university freshmen: the chain-mediated role of self-efficacy and interpersonal relationship

“…Self-efficacy serves as a crucial intermediary factor between an individual’s subjective exercise experience and the development of anxiety disorder. Several studies have demonstrated that the subjective exercise experience can alleviate anxiety by enhancing an individual’s self-efficacy ( Liu, 2022 ; Wang et al, 2022 ). This study used the subjective exercise experience, self-efficacy, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder scales to investigate 300 University students.…”