Relationship between Leisure Experience and Aggression: Mediating Effect of Self-esteem

Studies have suggested that leisure has divergent effects on adolescent aggression. Our aim was to further study the relationship between leisure experience and aggression according the theory of leisure boredom. We investigated the role of leisure experience from four aspects: perceived freedom, perceived intrinsic motivation, perceived extrinsic motivation, and perceived competence. Furthermore, based on the ABCs of rational–emotive theory, we explored the mediating role of self-esteem between leisure experience and aggression. The participants included 660 Chinese teenagers with an average age of 14. Among them, male students accounted for 310 (49.4%) and female students totaled 318 (50.6%). We used three questionnaires to measure leisure experience, self esteem and aggression. We found that leisure experience was positively correlated with self-esteem and negatively correlated with aggression. Self-esteem was also negatively correlated with aggression. Additionally, self-esteem played a mediating role between leisure experience and aggression. The results suggest that the focus should not only be on the influence of content of youth leisure activities on aggression, but also on experience during leisure, since the latter could have wide-ranging effects by influencing self-esteem levels.