Elsevier

Journal of Research in Personality

Volume 70, October 2017, Pages 122-133
Journal of Research in Personality

Full Length Article
High, low, and in between: Self-esteem development from middle childhood to young adulthood

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2017.07.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We examined self-esteem in a German sample (N = 240) followed over two decades.

  • We linked data from two self-esteem measures using item response theory methods.

  • Self-esteem was most stable in young adulthood, and least stable in adolescence.

  • Self-esteem declined from childhood to adolescence, and increased into young adulthood.

  • Early childhood shyness and aggressiveness was not linked to self-esteem development.

Abstract

We describe self-esteem development in a German sample (N = 240, 48% female) followed longitudinally from middle childhood to young adulthood, using data spanning 20 years. Data from the Self-Perception Profile for Children (Harter, 1985) and the Self-Description Questionnaire III (Marsh & O'Neill, 1985) were linked using item response theory methods. Rank-order stability was high in middle childhood, low in adolescence, and highest in young adulthood. Mean-levels were relatively high in middle childhood, decreased into adolescence, but increased into young adulthood. Early childhood shyness and aggressiveness as rated by parents, teachers, and observers did not influence the self-esteem trajectory. We provide the first longitudinal evidence for the self-esteem trajectory from middle childhood to young adulthood, replicating and extending previous findings.

Introduction

Global self-esteem refers to a person’s subjective evaluation of his or her self-worth. The extent to which a person holds positive self-views has been shown to be important for fostering goals, coping strategies, and behaviors that enable success for one's relationships, career, and well-being (Kuster et al., 2013, Orth et al., 2012, Steiger et al., 2014, Trzesniewski et al., 2006). Recently, there has been an influx of longitudinal research characterizing the trajectory of self-esteem (Orth et al., 2015, Orth and Robins, 2014, von Soest et al., 2016), offering much needed insights into the normative development of self-esteem from adolescence to young adulthood, and young adulthood to old age. Yet, to date, research on the lifespan trajectory of self-esteem has not included the shift from childhood to adolescence. During this time, children mature in their cognitive abilities, struggle with puberty, and become more concerned with their peers (Robins & Trzesniewski, 2005), making the transition from childhood to adolescence especially important for self-esteem development. Furthermore, there is little empirical research that has examined the developmental antecedents of self-esteem (but see Harris et al., 2015, Orth, 2017). Therefore, it is important to gain a better understanding of the lifespan development of self-esteem from middle childhood onward, and moreover, attempt to identify childhood factors that predict the trajectory of self-esteem itself.

In the present study, we examined global self-esteem development from middle childhood to young adulthood. We began by charting the trajectory of self-esteem, and sought to extend previous cross-sectional and longitudinal findings regarding self-esteem development by examining both stability and change during middle childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. We used multiple informant reports (i.e., parent, teacher, and observer ratings) of early childhood personality to predict who increased or decreased in self-esteem during the transitions from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to young adulthood. Specifically, we focused on shyness and aggressiveness between the ages of 4 and 6 years old as predictors of self-esteem because these traits have been linked to low self-esteem and difficulties in the social domain, raising the possibility that they could affect the development of self-esteem. Below, we review previous research on these topics, first turning to the literature on self-esteem development.

Self-esteem is an evaluation of one’s own worthiness and competence, but theoretical perspectives emphasize the importance of the social world in shaping self-esteem. Our self-views are thought to develop from our interactions with others and how we believe others see us (Cooley, 1902, Harter, 2012, Mead, 1934). Sociometer theory (Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995) highlights the social nature of self-esteem and posits that it is a sociometer, or psychological gauge that signals the extent to which one is accepted by others, helping people maintain their social ties. The stable component of self-esteem is seen as one’s judgment that he or she is generally valued and accepted by others, and as the “resting state” of the sociometer (Leary et al., 1995). Self-esteem is moderately stable across time and contexts, yet it is also mutable, especially during developmental transitions such as the ones from childhood to adolescence, and adolescence to young adulthood (Huang, 2010, Hutteman et al., 2015). Both rank-order stability and mean-levels of self-esteem change across the lifespan. Rank-order stability refers to an individual’s standing on the construct of interest, relative to others in the sample. Rank-order stability of self-esteem is lowest in early childhood and old age, relatively low but increasing in adolescence, and highest in adulthood (Donnellan et al., 2012, Orth and Robins, 2014, Trzesniewski et al., 2003). In childhood, stability is considered to be low because self-esteem is emerging and not fully formed during this time (Eccles et al., 1993, Robins et al., 2002). In adolescence, stability is argued to be higher than in childhood due to an increased awareness of self, but lower relative to young adulthood because of maturational and social changes that are experienced during this time (Orth and Robins, 2014, Robins and Trzesniewski, 2005). Accordingly, in the present study, we expected to find low rank-order stability in childhood, low but increasing stability into adolescence, and high stability into young adulthood.

Mean, or average levels of self-esteem, are relatively high in childhood, decrease during adolescence, and then steadily increase into young adulthood (Orth et al., 2010, Orth et al., 2012, Orth et al., 2015, Robins et al., 2002, von Soest et al., 2016). Young children are thought to exhibit relatively high self-esteem because their self-views are unrealistically positive (Robins & Trzesniewski, 2005). As children's cognitive skills mature, they begin to compare their skills and abilities to their peers and consider feedback from close others, including the extent to which they are liked and accepted by others, and develop more accurate, and generally, less positive self-views (Robins & Trzesniewski, 2005). Self-esteem continues to decrease into adolescence, with pubertal changes, changing school contexts, and the increased capacity for self-reflection being implicated in this decline (Orth and Robins, 2014, Robins and Trzesniewski, 2005). During the transition into young adulthood, self-esteem has been found to increase as individuals increase in autonomy at school and work, and deepen their social relationships with others (Orth & Robins, 2014). Accordingly, in the present study, we expected to find self-esteem to be relatively high in mid-childhood, decrease into adolescence, and then increase into young adulthood.

Self-esteem development has been examined almost exclusively in childhood (Arunkumar et al., 1999, Rodriguez et al., 2003), from childhood to adolescence (Hoge et al., 1990, Wigfield et al., 1991), or from adolescence to adulthood (Erol and Orth, 2011, Orth and Robins, 2014, von Soest et al., 2016), including in a recent study that examined self-esteem in the LOGIC data from when youth were 17- to 29-years-old (Luan et al., 2017). These studies have contributed much towards our understanding of self-esteem development. Yet, when piecing together the evidence from different developmental and time periods, we cannot rule out cohort effects – the possibility that age differences in self-esteem are confounded with experiences of events that are not shared with other populations (Baltes, Cornelius, & Nesselroade, 1979). For example, some have claimed that societal shifts in the focus on the self have influenced the nature and developmental course of self-esteem (Twenge, 2006). Studies linking childhood to adulthood are rare, understandably, because researchers are often faced with the issue of heterotypical continuity, where manifestations of the same underlying trait change as individuals mature. In the present study, we had the unique opportunity to track self-esteem in the same group of individuals over two decades, allowing us to examine stability and change in self-esteem from middle childhood to young adulthood.

Personality is thought to influence the ways individuals construe the world around them (Caspi and Shiner, 2011, Rothbart, 2011) as well as themselves (Robins et al., 2010, Robins et al., 2001). Specifically, personality can influence which features of a social interaction that one attends to, in turn, coloring one's perceptions and experience, including one's self-evaluations (Caspi & Shiner, 2011). Shyness and aggressiveness are aspects of personality that reveal how individuals relate to the social world, and reflect both temperament and social competence (Caspi et al., 1987, Caspi et al., 1988, Denissen et al., 2008, Horney, 1950, Rubin et al., 2009). Shyness refers to a tendency towards experiencing worry, tension, or awkwardness during social interactions, especially with strangers (Cheek and Buss, 1981, Coplan and Rubin, 2010). Aggressiveness, in contrast, refers to a proneness towards behaving with the intention of causing harm to another person (Anderson & Bushman, 2002). Caspi et al., 1987, Caspi et al., 1988 operationalized “moving away from the world” and “moving against the world” as informant ratings of children's tendencies towards exhibiting shy and aggressive behaviors respectively, and found that being perceived as either shy or aggressive in childhood predicted poor outcomes in the psychological, social, and work domains 30 years later. Shyness and aggressiveness in childhood are thought to have such powerful consequences on individuals’ life trajectories because of their consistency throughout the lifespan (Caspi et al., 1987, Caspi et al., 1988).

The extant research indicates that shyness in childhood is concurrently associated with low self-esteem (Crozier, 1995, Kemple et al., 1996, Rubin et al., 2009). Studies also indicate that shyness in childhood shows negative prospective effects for self-esteem. In a previous study that examined the LOGIC data, youth who were seen as extremely shy towards familiar peers at 4- to 6-years-old were likely to report low levels of self-esteem between the ages of 8- and 10-years-old (Asendorpf & van Aken, 1994). In another, longitudinal study, Icelandic youth who were categorized as shy at 7-years-old were likely to exhibit low levels of self-esteem in early and middle adolescence (Hart, Hoffmann, Edelstein, & Keller, 1997). Shyness in childhood is also predictive of a restricted social life (Gest, 1997) and low self-esteem (Rubin, Chen, McDougall, Bowker, & McKinnon, 1995) in adulthood. Additionally, Swedish girls who were perceived as shy in early childhood were likely to exhibit low levels of self-esteem 30 years later (Kerr, 2000). These results suggest that we might expect that individuals perceived as shy in early childhood might be negatively affected in their self-esteem development.

With regard to aggressiveness, the extant research suggests that it is associated with low self-worth (Coplan et al., 2004, Donnellan et al., 2005; but see Denissen, Thomaes, & Bushman, in press). And, like shyness, longitudinal studies that examine aggressiveness in childhood suggests that it has negative prospective effects on constructs related to self-esteem. In one longitudinal study, American children who were rated by teachers as aggressive in kindergarten were less likely to be accepted by their peers, more likely to have fewer friends, and more likely to be lonelier than their less aggressive peers from kindergarten to the 2nd grade (Ladd & Burgess, 1999). In another, longitudinal study, Norwegian adolescents who were seen by their mothers as aggressive from infancy to mid-adolescence were likely to report low levels of life satisfaction and high levels of depression and anxiety (Kjeldsen et al., 2016). In yet another, longitudinal study, American children who were seen as aggressive at 7-years-old were likely to experience sharply increasing levels of loneliness from late childhood to mid-adolescence (Schinka, van Dulmen, Mata, Bossarte, & Swahn, 2013).

Taken together, while much of the research on self-esteem has focused on its prospective effects (e.g., Kuster et al., 2013, Orth et al., 2012, Trzesniewski et al., 2006), including on aggressiveness (Denissen et al., in press, Donnellan et al., 2005), conceptual and empirical links point to the possibility that children who possess traits that might hinder successful social relations, such as high levels of shyness and aggressiveness, might be negatively impacted in their subsequent self-esteem development. Examining this possibility not only provides a longitudinal consideration of the ideas posited by sociometer theory (Leary et al., 1995), but can shed light on whether or not early childhood is an appropriate time to target these ways of interacting with the world. To date, however, there is no research examining how shyness and aggressiveness in early childhood predicts changes in self-esteem from middle childhood to adulthood.

In the present study, we examined global self-esteem development in a sample of individuals tracked over 20 years. Self-esteem was assessed using two different measures of global self-esteem. In order to chart the trajectory of self-esteem from middle childhood to young adulthood, we linked scores from the two different measures of global self-esteem using item response theory methods. Following previous cross-sectional and longitudinal findings regarding self-esteem development (Orth and Robins, 2014, Robins et al., 2002), we expected that self-esteem would be relatively high in childhood, decrease into adolescence, and then increase into young adulthood. We then tested whether or not shyness and aggressiveness in early childhood influenced the trajectory of self-esteem. We expected that those who were seen as having shy or aggressive personalities in childhood would show a less positive self-esteem trajectory relative to their peers.

In the present study, we adopted a multi-method approach in addressing our research aims. Specifically, we used data from multiple informants, consisting of parent, teacher, and observer ratings of early childhood shyness and aggressiveness. These data consisted of measures that differed in their objectivity – ranging from the familiar perceptions of the participant's shyness and aggressiveness made by parents and teachers to the more distal judgments of observers in both laboratory and field settings. By using this approach to assessing early childhood personality, we were able to obtain a more comprehensive perspective of shyness and aggressiveness and their influences on participant ratings of their own self-esteem, moving beyond previous research that has relied on either self- or single informant ratings.

Section snippets

Sample and procedure

We used data from the Munich Longitudinal Study on the Genesis of Individual Competencies (LOGIC),

Results

We conducted our study analyses using the psych Version 1.5.8 (Revelle, 2015) and mirt (Chalmers, 2012) packages in R Version 3.2.3 (R Core Team, 2015), and Mplus Version 7 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998–2012). We used the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) (≤ .08), the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) (≥ .90), and the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) (≥ .90) as indices to determine adequate model fit (Browne and Cudeck, 1993, Hu and Bentler, 1999; see Table 1 for fit statistics for all models and

Discussion

In the present research, we examined global self-esteem development in a sample of individuals followed longitudinally from age 9 to age 29, and then tested the possibility that children’s styles of relating to the social world in early childhood – as perceived by parents, teachers, and observers – were predictive of individual differences in the trajectory of self-esteem. Our findings contribute to the literature on self-esteem development by describing its longitudinal trajectory from middle

Conclusion

In the present study, we examined the development of self-esteem in a sample of individuals followed longitudinally from middle childhood to young adulthood. We applied item response theory methods to link data from two different self-esteem measures, allowing the present study to track self-esteem longitudinally from a developmental period that has been neglected in the lifespan literature – middle childhood. We found that rank-order stability of self-esteem was high in middle childhood, low

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Phil Chalmers, Kevin Grimm and Jonathan Helm for their statistical advice, to Ziyan Luan and Lisanne de Moor for their help with data organization, and to Gabriella Harari, Duygu Taşfiliz and Keith Widaman for useful discussions about this research. The title of this manuscript comes from the songs of Townes van Zandt and Neil Halstead.

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