Stability and Change in Domain‐specific Self‐esteem and Global Self‐esteem

A notable uptick of interest in the stability of self‐esteem has been observed over the past few years. Most researchers, however, have focused on unidimensional rather than multidimensional conceptualizations of self‐esteem. The paucity of empirical research is surprising given conflicting theoretical perspectives on the stability of self‐esteem. The goal of the present study was to thoroughly disentangle different conceptualizations of self‐esteem and test opposing classical theories on (i) the stability and (ii) the direction of mutual influence of these different forms of self‐esteem. We analysed two‐year longitudinal data from participants (N = 644 at T1, N = 241 at T2) with an average age of 47.0 years (SD = 12.4). Analyses using a latent variable approach revealed that the domains of self‐esteem were relatively stable in terms of rank order and mean levels. In fact, the size of the stability coefficients was comparable to that of other trait measures that have been reported in the literature and paralleled the stability observed for global self‐esteem. Results did not provide support for either top‐down or bottom‐up effects between domain‐specific and global self‐esteem. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications regarding the stability and development of self‐esteem in adulthood and advance the understanding of self‐esteem in personality theory. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Self‐esteem and values

The purpose of the present study was to connect personal values to self‐esteem in 14 samples (N = 3612) of pre‐professionals, high school students, and adults, from Finland, Russia, Switzerland, Italy, and Estonia. Self‐enhancement values (power, achievement) and openness to change values (self‐direction, stimulation) were positively, and self‐transcendence values (universalism, benevolence) and conservation values (tradition) were negatively related to self‐esteem. These direct relations between values and self‐esteem were only partly consistent with predictions derived from Maslow's theory of growth and deficiency needs. In samples of pre‐professionals, self‐esteem was correlated with congruence between personal values and the prevailing values environment. On the group‐level, endorsement of achievement and universalism values was more strongly and positively related to self‐esteem in samples where these values were considered more important. In contrast, endorsement of self‐direction and hedonism values was more strongly and positively related to self‐esteem in samples where these values were considered less important. These group‐level results are interpreted as suggesting that attainment of culturally significant goals may raise self‐esteem, but that high self‐esteem may be required for the pursuit of less socially desirable goals. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self‐esteem and caregiving in romantic relationships: Self‐ and partner perceptions

Self‐esteem may be associated with romantic partners' experience of emotional support and caregiving. Using a sample of 6,385 heterosexual couples in committed relationships gathered from the RELATionship Evaluation (RELATE) data set (see www.relate‐institute.org ), structural equation modeling was used to compare two actor–partner interdependence models examining the associations between both partners' self‐esteem and perceptions of partner caregiving responsiveness (i.e., accessibility, responsiveness, and engagement). Male and female self‐esteem was significantly related to partners' caregiving responsiveness while controlling for family‐of‐origin attachment experiences and relationship stability. Female self‐esteem was also significantly associated with females' caregiving responsiveness. These findings yield important implications, demonstrating that higher self‐esteem may be associated with improved caregiving behaviors between romantic partners. Relevant implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Differential relations of grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism to emotion dysregulation: Self‐esteem matters

The present study aims to explore the effects of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism on emotion dysregulation and examine the mediating role of self‐esteem on these associations. Undergraduates (N = 426) completed self‐report measurements on grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, self‐esteem and emotion dysregulation. Correlation analyses indicated that grandiose narcissism was negatively correlated with emotion dysregulation, while vulnerable narcissism was positively correlated with emotion dysregulation. Moreover, mediational analyses revealed that self‐esteem fully mediated the association between grandiose narcissism and emotion dysregulation, and partially mediated the association between vulnerable narcissism and emotion dysregulation. The present study highlights the importance of self‐esteem and deepens the understanding of the associations between the two forms of narcissism and emotion dysregulation.     

Self‐esteem: a behavioural genetic perspective

Self‐esteem, the affective or evaluative appraisal of one's self, is linked with adaptive personality functioning: high self‐esteem is associated with psychological health benefits (e.g. subjective well‐being, absence of depression and anxiety), effective coping with illness, and satisfactory social relationships. Although several pathways have been hypothesized to effect within‐family transmission of self‐esteem (e.g. parenting style, family relationship patterns), we focus in this article on genetic influences. Genetic studies on both global and domain‐specific self‐esteem and on both level and stability of self‐esteem converge in showing that (i) genetic influences on self‐esteem are substantial, (ii) shared environmental influences are minimal, and (iii) non‐shared environmental influences explain the largest amount of variance in self‐esteem. We advocate that understanding of current issues in self‐esteem research will be enriched by including behavioural genetic approaches. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self‐esteem and its relationship to bullying behaviour

From the rapidly growing literature on bullying, it is increasingly recognised that peer relationship problems as manifested in being bullied are associated with low self‐esteem. However, the literature on self‐esteem in relation to children who bully others is controversial. The objective of this paper is to elucidate further our understanding of the relationship between self‐concept and bullying behaviour. Data from a nationwide study of bullying behaviour carried out in Ireland during 1993‐1994 have been reviewed. The relevant results from 8,249 school children aged 8 to 18 years are presented. The paper examines the global and dimensional nature of self‐esteem and how it relates to children and adolescents who either have been victimised or bullied others. A distinction is made between “pure victims,” “pure bullies,” and children and adolescents who were both bullied and who bullied others. In other words, pure victims were those who had not bullied others, and pure bullies had not themselves been bullied. Those who were both bullied and bullied others were subdivided further into victims who bully occasionally, sometimes, and frequently and bullies who are victimised, occasionally, sometimes, and frequently. The results show that children of both primary and post‐primary age who were involved in bullying as victims, bullies, or both had significantly lower global self‐esteem than did children who had neither bullied nor been bullied. However, the pure bullies, in contrast to the pure victims, placed the same value on their physical attractiveness and attributes and on their popularity as did their peers who had not bullied others or been bullied. The bully‐victims of all ages had the lowest self‐esteem of the subgroups in the study. Also, the more frequently children were victimised or bullied others, the lower was their global self‐esteem. The typology and frequency of bullying and the age of the children when they were involved in bullying influenced the status of the specific domains of self‐esteem. There were, e.g., significant differences in anxiety between the pure bullies of post‐primary age and their peers who had not bullied others or been bullied. The post‐primary children who bullied most frequently were the least anxious. The results indicate that high self‐esteem protects children and adolescents from involvement in bullying. Thus, in view of the strong relationship between self‐esteem and bullying that has been found in the present paper, it is recommended that top priority be given by parents and teachers to preventing and reducing feelings of poor self‐worth among children and adolescents. Aggr. Behav. 27:269–283, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Self‐esteem and self‐certainty: a mediational analysis

Self‐esteem has been found to be related to the certainty with which specific self‐conceptions are held. This study tested a number of competing accounts for this relationship, using a more rigorous idiographic approach. Specifically, it was thought that the relationship between self‐esteem and self‐certainty might be mediated by self‐concept clarity, the positivity of specific self‐conceptions, and impression management concerns. However, none of these fully mediated the relationship between self‐esteem and self‐certainty. Participants with higher self‐esteem were more certain of their central self‐conceptions than were those with lower self‐esteem. This was true even though participants were allowed to generate their most relevant and central self‐conceptions themselves. Discussion focuses on the role of social information in the possibly direct relationship between self‐esteem and self‐certainty. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self‐esteem discrepancies and defensive reactions to social feedback

Recent research has provided increasing evidence that discrepancies between implicit and explicit self‐esteem (SE) are related to defensiveness. However, only one pattern, called fragile SE (a combination of high explicit and low implicit SE), has been the focus of research so far. Relatively little attention has been paid to the second possible SE discrepancy (low explicit/high implicit). We propose that both types of discrepancies are maladaptive, because they indicate a lack of integration in self‐representation. We conducted two studies on the correlates of discrepant SE in the sphere of defensiveness. We hypothesized that persons with discrepant SE exhibit more defensive behaviour than individuals with congruent SE. In two student samples, explicit SE was measured by means of the Multidimensional Self‐Esteem Scale. Implicit SE was measured with the Name Letter Technique (Study 1) and an Implicit Association Test (Study 2). In Study 1 (N = 102) we examined effects of implicit and explicit SE on defensive reactions to ambiguous statements. For this purpose, we adapted the Ambiguous Statements Task (AST, Tafarodi, 1998 ), a procedure that measures participants' tendency to interpret ambiguous expressions in a positive vs negative manner. We found that the combination of low explicit SE and high implicit SE was associated with a more positive interpretation of the ambiguous statements. Study 2 (N = 87) investigated the effects of discrepant SE on reactions to SE threat in an experimental setting. The time participants spent reading positive or negative social feedback was used as an unobtrusive measure of defensiveness. We found that people with discrepant SE went through the negative feedback faster than people with congruent SE. In sum, the studies provide converging evidence that both kinds of discrepancies between implicit and explicit SE are related to defensive behaviour.     

Self‐esteem memories and school success in early adolescence

Early adolescents recounted experiences when they felt ‘especially good’ or ‘especially bad’ about themselves in the past year. Consistent with prior research using adult participants, negative memories focused primarily on social themes, whereas positive memories also prominently included achievement themes. Girls described more social themes than did boys for both positive and negative memories. The content of self‐esteem memories was related to teachers' formal assessments of adolescents' social and academic functioning: The presence of achievement themes in positive and negative memories was associated with more positive teacher ratings. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self‐esteem as a source of evaluative conditioning

This study was designed to examine whether self‐esteem can be used as a source of evaluative conditioning, and whether implicit or explicit self‐esteem was more predictive of the evaluative conditioning effect. Moreover, the role of contingency awareness in the acquisition of the evaluative conditioning effect was also examined. Words related to the self and a general other were served as unconditioned stimuli (USs) in the evaluative conditioning process in order to see whether the evaluation could be transferred to neutral, abstract paintings after 10 times of pairing. An evaluative conditioning effect was demonstrated in that the evaluation of the paintings became more positive after repeatedly paired with words about the self but not words about general others. Implicit self‐esteem predicted the magnitude of the evaluative conditioning effect, while the association between explicit self‐esteem and the evaluative conditioning effect was nonsignificant, both with and without the effect of contingency awareness being controlled for. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self‐efficacy,self‐esteem,and entrepreneurship among the unemployed

This study focuses on entrepreneurial self‐efficacy, general self‐efficacy, and global self‐esteem and on their role in the entrepreneurial process. Apart from providing evidence of the relationship between these self‐beliefs and entrepreneurial intention, it also demonstrates how they are related to actual business start‐up. Longitudinal data were obtained from 332 unemployed individuals. After 1 year, official confirmations of new firm registrations were collected. Higher levels of all 3 self‐referent beliefs were positively associated with entrepreneurial intention. Multivariate analyses showed that entrepreneurial and general self‐efficacy beliefs were important predictors of this intention. Self‐referent beliefs accounted for an additional 12% of the variance in entrepreneurial intention and for an additional 4% of the variance in actual business start‐up beyond the demographic variables.     

Self‐esteem is dominated by agentic over communal information

We present a Double Perspective Model (DPM) explaining why agency (competence) and communion (warmth) constitute two basic content dimensions of social cognition. Every social action involves two perspectives: of the agent (a person who performs an action) and of the recipient (a person at whom the action is directed). Immediate cognitive goals of the agent and recipient differ, which results in heightened accessibility and weight of content referring either to agency (from the agent's perspective) or to communion (from the recipient's perspective). DPM explains why evaluations of other persons are dominated by communal over agentic considerations and allows a novel hypothesis that self‐esteem is dominated by agentic over communal information. We present several studies supporting this hypothesis. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Deciphering Subjective Trajectories for Life Satisfaction Using Self‐versus‐Normative Other Discrepancies,Self‐esteem and Hope

Drawing on temporal and social comparison perspectives, we examined sources of the widespread belief that life gets better and better over time by determining how young adults evaluate their past, present and anticipated future life satisfaction (LS) relative to beliefs about normative others. We assessed whether patterns of subjective LS trajectories based on self‐versus‐normative other discrepancies varied as a function of self‐esteem and whether such patterns were accounted for by hope, encompassing goal‐related cognitions and motivations. University participants (n = 394) completed measures of their own and normative others' past, present and anticipated future LS, as well as self‐esteem and hope scales. Results from latent growth curve analyses demonstrated that high‐self‐esteem and low‐self‐esteem individuals perceived normative others' LS as progressing on a similar upward subjective temporal trajectory; however, high‐self‐esteem individuals perceived self‐improvement from past to present LS and self‐consistency from present to future LS relative to others. Low‐self‐esteem individuals perceived self‐consistency from past to present LS and self‐improvement from present to future LS relative to others. These associations were accounted for by hope. This research highlights the utility of combining temporal and social comparison perspectives for understanding how people envision their LS unfolding over time. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self‐esteem discrepancies and identity‐expressive consumption: Evidence from Norwegian adolescents

Prior research established that simultaneously holding discrepant explicit (deliberate, controlled) and implicit (automatic, uncontrolled) self‐esteem gives rise to self‐enhancing behaviours. Given that individuals tend to enhance their self‐concepts with brands that are associated with positive identities, this study examined whether self‐esteem discrepancy was related to the extent to which individuals developed connections with brands that are associated with their in‐groups. Findings from an adolescent sample (ages 16–18) indicated that adolescents with larger discrepancies between explicit and implicit self‐esteem were more likely to construct their self‐concepts using in‐group‐linked brands.     

Self‐esteem as a monitor of fundamental psychological need satisfaction

Researchers have long theorized about the function of self‐esteem. Theories such as sociometer, terror management, and self‐determination have each received substantial empirical support, but all purport a different function of self‐esteem. Despite each theory's persuasiveness, they are sometimes at odds, and there remains no clear consensus regarding the function of self‐esteem. In the present paper, we propose the notion that self‐esteem monitors the meeting of multiple fundamental psychological needs, a theory we call the Need‐Satisfaction Framework of self‐esteem. We outline existing empirical support for our theory in the context of three well‐documented fundamental needs: belonging, self‐determination (i.e.,autonomy and competence), and meaning. Across all three needs, we review converging evidence supporting two hypotheses for self‐esteem's need‐monitoring function: (1) threats to needs lower self‐esteem and (2) high self‐esteem buffers defensive responses to need threats. We expand on established theoretical and empirical work in the domain of self‐esteem and also discuss testable future hypotheses.     

Self‐esteem moderates preferences for accepting versus rejecting interaction partners

Two experiments compared the social orientations of people with high and low self‐esteem (HSEs vs. LSEs). In Experiment 1, participants received positive or negative interpersonal feedback from an accepting or rejecting evaluator. HSEs chose to interact with a rejecting evaluator more often than LSEs did. In Experiment 2, participants received solely negative interpersonal feedback from an accepting or rejecting evaluator of high or low social status. This time, both HSEs and LSEs chose an accepting/high‐status evaluator over a rejecting/low‐status one, but only HSEs chose a rejecting/high‐status evaluator over an accepting/low‐status one. Implications are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self‐esteem mediates the relationship between spirituality and subjective well‐being in Iran

Self‐esteem appears to play a central role in the spiritual life and ethical behaviour of the typical Iranian. For example, for many Iranians, humankind is believed to be the crown of creation, and each person is believed to be individually valued by God. Previous empirical studies also indicate that in Iran spirituality is positively associated with self‐esteem. On this basis, it was hypothesised that self‐esteem would be one of the mechanisms through which spirituality leads to increased mental well‐being. Mediation analysis showed that self‐esteem was a partial mediator of the spirituality–well‐being relationship. Moreover, results of moderated mediation analysis revealed that this mediation was not significantly moderated by gender, and that the indirect path through self‐esteem was significant in both genders. Implications of the results and their relevance to other western and eastern religions (e.g. Christianity and Buddhism) are discussed.     

Self‐esteem,perception of relationships,and emotional distress: A cross‐cultural study

This study examined the relative importance of self‐esteem, family cohesion, and support from friends in predicting depressed mood and anxiety in Japanese and American college students. Contrary to expectations, self‐esteem was the strongest predictor of emotional distress in both groups of students. Nevertheless, consistent with predictions derived from Markus and Kitayama's theory of self‐construals, family cohesion accounted for a significantly larger percentage of the variance in predicting emotional distress in Japan than in the United States. In both countries, the relations between support from friends and the measures of emotional distress were entirely mediated by self‐esteem. However, among Japanese students, family cohesion accounted for additional significant variance in predicting the measures of emotional distress, even after controlling for self‐esteem.     

Exaggerated Positivity in Self‐Evaluation: A Social Neuroscience Approach to Reconciling the Role of Self‐esteem Protection and Cognitive Bias

Recent neuroscience research provides new insight into why people tend to view themselves through rose‐colored glasses and suggests a different approach for improving self‐insight. Rose‐colored glasses (sometimes referred to as positive illusions, positivity bias, self‐serving bias, self‐enhancement, or overconfidence) are a pervasive characteristic of self‐evaluation. While it is intuitive to think about rose‐colored glasses as a self‐esteem protection tactic, research has shown that people tend to exaggerate their positive attributes even when self‐esteem is not at stake. This raises questions about the relation of the exaggerated positivity used to protect self‐esteem to the exaggerated positivity seen in other circumstances. Are people using a consistent thought pattern to overemphasize their positive attributes which generalizes across situations regardless of whether self‐esteem is at stake? Or is there something different about the way people go about overemphasizing their positive attributes when coping with a threat to self‐esteem? Recent neuroscience research supports the latter: inducing the need for self‐esteem protection changes the neural profile underlying exaggerated positivity. When self‐esteem is threatened, exaggerated positivity in self‐evaluation engages orbitofrontal cortex and a functional network of increased basal ganglia activation and decreased middle frontal gyrus activation. In contrast, exaggerated positivity arising in the absence of self‐esteem threat tends to reduce orbitofrontal cortex activation and its functional connectivity with the temporal, occipital, and frontal lobes. This discovery suggests that not all rose‐colored glasses are created equally and, therefore, curtailing them may require different interventions depending on whether self‐esteem protection is their underlying driving force.