Impact of Self-Esteem on Problem Solving Skills of Male and Female Adolescents

Abstract

Developing the cognitive abilities of people is a potential manner through which the overall growth of an individual can be expected (Fe et. al., 2022). Understanding the factors that influences the development of cognitive skills have been widely researched over years and the present study tries to understand the role of self-esteem in the problem solving skills of adolescent students. A quantitative study was conducted on a sample of 200 adolescents belonging to the Chennai city of India, measuring their problem solving capacity and self-esteem to know the relationship between the variables and understand if self-esteem predicts the problem solving skills of male and female adolescents. A gender specific lens was maintained throughout the study along with a note on the role of type of schooling. The study concluded that self-esteem significantly predicts the problem solving skills of female adolescents while the variables are not correlated among male adolescents. It was interesting to note that even when there was gender based difference in predictability of problem solving by self-esteem, neither the problem solving or self-esteem scores were significantly different among male and female adolescents. Other relevant results of the study along with the future implications and limitations have been discussed in detail.