Describe Factors Thet May Affect Self-Esteem.

This may lead the individual to have a negative self concept with socialisation. Furthermore, having high expectations can also have a negative self concept of an individual, also if the person has been compared to other friendship groups or siblings can have a negative influence as they may feel that they are letting people down because they aren’t as good as who they are being compared to.

Appearance can affect an individual's self-concept both positively and harmfully. For example, appearance constructive influence will be pictures displayed by sports encouraging individuals to keep up a healthy lifestyle.  The beginning of puberty can cause teenager's self-esteem to be affected. When a female's body starts to change, she may start to feel self-conscious about the changes and the way she's developing in compared to her friends. A boy may feel embarrassed about being shorter than his friends and is taking longer to grow facial hair or their voice hasn’t got deeper yet. Whereas, a girl may feel ashamed if she grows large breasts and if she attracts unwanted attention from older men. They may start developing crushes on peers and may become more concerned with appearance more than a child would be. Comparing their body to the pictures on the media may also affect how a person sees themselves; if they unable to afford the most popular clothing or is larger or smaller than popular musicians and actors e.g. David Beckham, they may feel smaller and uncomfortable to both friends and celebrities.

Education can also affect an individual's self-concept by having supportive teachers who continuously gives encouragement and praise to a student to keep up the good work. Also, another factor that can influence an individual's self-concept is the lack of employment due to having a poor education. Education can impact on a person's self-esteem if they cannot get into employment and the person will get a negative self-image and low self-esteem. A person may feel pressure to succeed at school, if they don’t achieve the best they can they may also lose self esteem. The individual may also gain knowledge and understanding on life meaning that they can gain friendships through education to boost self esteem as it helps show that people want to be your friend, also the expectations of teachers affect affect a person’s success or failure as a student who is expected to do well often perform better than those who don’t achieve higher grades and this is known as self fulfilling prophecy.