TITLE:
The Implicit Self-Esteem of Japanese Junior High School Students under the COVID-19 Pandemic
AUTHORS:
Akitoshi Uchida, Kazuo Mori
KEYWORDS:
COVID-19, Implicit Self-Esteem, Junior High School Students, Paper-and-Pencil IAT, Pre- and Post-Test Design with Similar Cohorts
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.10 No.12,
November
1,
2022
ABSTRACT: We aimed to examine the psychological effects of the COVID-19 turmoil of
junior high school students. We assessed 142 Japanese junior high school
students (74 boys, 68 girls) who experienced the confusion caused by the
COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and compared them with those of 164 students (81
boys, 83 girls) before the turmoil in 2018. We administered the
paper-and-pencil Implicit Association Test (Mori, Uchida, & Imada, 2008) to
assess implicit self-esteem with the target word “myself” to both cohorts. We
classified them into positive, neutral, and negative self-esteem groups based
on their implicit association scores. Contrary to the fear of adverse effects,
the results showed that students’ implicit self-esteem scores maintained the
same level even under the COVID-19 turmoil
in 2020. Thus, the present study showed a silver lining of Japanese
junior high school students whose self-esteem were maintained under the
unordinary school life.