The Actual and Ideal Self-concept in Disabled Children, Adolescents and Adults

Miriam Ittyerah and Nimisha Kumar
Additional contact information
Miriam Ittyerah: Miriam Ittyerah, Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, Kerala. miriamittyerah7@yahoo.co.in
Nimisha Kumar: Nimisha Kumar is a doctoral student in Psychology at the University of Delhi.

Psychology and Developing Societies, 2007, vol. 19, issue 1, 81-112

Abstract: The actual and ideal self-concepts of handicapped children, adolescents and adults were studied with the help of questionnaires to compare their responses to body image, skills/abilities, life experience, and social interaction. Results indicated that children had a more positive self-concept than adults and adolescents. Men had a more positive self-concept than females. Further, social interaction and abilities were rated more positively than body image and life experience. Correlations between the actual and ideal selves revealed a positive relation between the actual self and the desired ideal self for all the groups and there were no gender differences. Narrative analysis of the groups revealed that adults held a more positive view of life as compared to adolescents or children. The positive views of the self were a consequence of factors that are largely internal to the respondent, such as the use of mature ways of thinking and maintaining one's self-respect. The negative views of the self were rooted in external factors over which the individual had little or no control such as poverty and negative attitudes of others. Although the female disabled group had a lower selfconcept than males, there was a positive relationship between their actual and ideal selves indicating acceptance of their congenital defects as a challenge to integrate into the mainstream.

Date: 2007
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/097133360701900104 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:psydev:v:19:y:2007:i:1:p:81-112

DOI: 10.1177/097133360701900104

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Psychology and Developing Societies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().