2009 年 20 巻 p. 41-53
Feelings of young people about inferiority in their appearance were analyzed and developmental changes in adolescence were investigated. Participants were junior high school, senior high school, and university students (n=433) who responded to items about recognition of inferiority in their appearance and related feelings. The results indicated that these feelings could be classified into six types: dissatisfactory feelings, sad feelings, ego-shrinking feelings, hostile feelings, yearning feelings, and self-affirmative feelings. Moreover, the results of cluster analysis indicated that the feelings could be classified into five types; other-ignoring type, self-affirmative type, self-negative type, yearning type, and other-aggressive type. For male, junior high school students showed the other-aggressive type more than other age-groups, high school students showed the other-ignoring type more than other age-groups, and university students showed the self-affirmative type more than other age-groups. Conversely, for females, junior high school students showed yearning type more than other age-groups, high school students showed the self-negative type and yearning types more than other age-groups, and university students showed the self-affirmative type more than other age-groups. These findings suggest that developmental changes of these feelings in adolescence are in transition; for males, aggression and ignoring others were disappearing and inferiority in their appearance was being accepted, whereas for females, yearning for others was changing into self-negation and inferiority in their appearance was being accepted.