• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.273-284
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• 2015

This study analyzes the effects of the self-esteem on the life satisfaction of 2,040 middle school senior students using the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey 2012 Data (KCYPS 2012) provided by the National Youth Policy Institute. In the ecological perspectives, this study considers two factors which influence the life satisfaction of the students; one factor is the environmental characteristics like parent intimacy, friend intimacy, teacher intimacy and study adaptation, and the other factor is the individual characteristics. In particular, self-esteem as one of the individual characteristics is divided into two separate categories, positive self and negative self. The two categories are found to have some interaction effects on the life satisfaction at the evaluation level. The effects of the negative self-evaluation on the life satisfaction appear to be different depending on the level of the positive self-evaluation. As the level of the positive self-evaluation becomes higher, the effects of the negative self-evaluation on the life satisfaction decreases. The life satisfaction becomes higher as the level of the negative self-evaluation is lower, and the life satisfaction is not high relatively at the low level of the positive self-evaluation. These results suggest that solving the adolescent's negative self-formation problem can not bring out the positive self-formation and there should be some plans for the positive self-formation more than simply solving the negative self- formation problem in order to improve the life satisfaction.