Do High- and Low-Active Adolescents Have Different Prototypes of Physically Active Peers?
Noemi Keresztes, et al.
Previous to this study, there have been other studies that looked at how someone’s view of a stereotype affects how likely they are to participate in the activities that the stereotypical person would partake in. Especially in the adolescent years, if the person has a positive view of the stereotype, then they are more likely to partake in that stereotype's activities. For example, if an adolescent thinks smoking is cool, they are more likely to try or participate in smoking. But the same is true for the opposite, if a student thinks smoking is bad, they are less likely to smoke. Also, these pre-conceived ideas develop at a very early age; adolescents are able to describe a stereotypical person like “the average smoker” without ever having smoked in their lives.
This study was looking to find how various students’ behaviors affected their view of a specific stereotype, but instead of investigating bad behaviors that are risky for one’s health, like drinking or doing drugs, they looked at a behavior that was beneficial to one’s health: exercise. The authors hypothesized that how a person perceived himself or herself compared to a stereotype, and how he or she compares that stereotype to others, will affect how that person feels about and perceives that stereotype. They examined a group of students from Hungary and focused on whether active and non-active students had different stereotypes of athletic peers and how their comparisons of themselves and others to the athletic protocol affected their perception of that protocol.
To study this, the authors sent out six-hundred surveys to students in secondary schools in two counties in southern Hungary, Bekes and Csongrad. Five-hundred and forty-eight out of the six-hundred surveys sent out were completed and returned. The students’ ages varied from fourteen to twenty-one years of age, with the Mean age being sixteen-and-a-half years old and a standard deviance of 1.3%. Also, there was a ninety-one percent response rate, and forty-two percent of the responses were from boys.
They found that most of the participants partook in physical activity outside of school and lasting more than thirty minutes at least once a week, which would place this large majority in the “physically active” group. While 52.2% of girls said they exercised at least once a week, 73.3% of boys said they exercised this much. Also, they found that most students thought positively of what would be called “the physically-active peer”, with a large majority describing this stereotype as healthy, sporty, and physically fit, and very few describing it as a bore or carefree.
After the study, the authors agreed that what someone’s opinion of a stereotype is will greatly affect that person’s view of behaviors that promote health, like exercising, because the attractive characteristics of that stereotype give the person motivation towards positive decision making when it comes to healthy behaviors.
This article relates to the work we have done in this class because it shows that the type of person you view yourself as affects the type of person you view other people as. Generally, if two people have similar likes and dislikes they will get along well, but if they are very different and have opposing views on things, they will judge each other in a negative manner. Who you view yourself as affects how you treat and see others.