Self-esteem importance beliefs: A new perspective on adolescent self-esteem

ABSTRACT

We propose that self-esteem importance has utility in research involving adolescents. Canadian adolescents ages 11–14 years (N =334) were compared to a large sample (N= 1792) and a validation subsample (n= 437) of young adults. Supplementary analyses established that our scale of self-esteem importance showed good psychometric performance among adolescents and adults. Structural equation modeling revealed that self-esteem and self-esteem importance had unique associations with bullying and victimization experiences, defending behaviors, and prosocial motivations. These associations were very similar across age groups. We propose that assessing young people’s beliefs about self-esteem’s importance provides useful information, not captured by self-esteem alone, about their identity and social experience.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-esteem importance
• self-esteem
• adolescence
• bullying
• defending

Statement of publication

We have not submitted this manuscript simultaneously for review at another journal, nor published it elsewhere.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Individual papers sometimes subtype further or use alternative terminology.

2. Theory and past data distinguish self-esteem importance from narcissism and self-esteem contingencies. Narcissism is self-positivity grossly distorted from reality (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001) and an emotionally driven “addiction” to self-esteem (Baumeister & Vohs, 2001), whereas self-esteem importance represents cognitive beliefs about self-esteem having positive consequences. We tend to find trivial associations between self-esteem importance and narcissism (r= −.03 to −.12; Vaughan-Johnston & Jacobson, 2019). Self-esteem contingencies are beliefs that specific outcomes cause changes in self-esteem (e.g., good grades causing higher self-esteem), whereas self-esteem importance is the belief that higher/lower self-esteem influences one’s outcomes (e.g., higher self-esteem causing good grades). Self-esteem contingency tends to moderately overlap with self-esteem importance (r= .36; Vaughan-Johnston & Jacobson, 2019).

3. We originally measured 20 items. These 17 items were invariant in a separate comparison of adolescents and young adults (Lambe & Craig, unpublished manuscript) and thus used for the present analyses.

4. The coefficient before the/refers to the adolescent sample, the value after to the young adults. Coefficients represent the items used in the final Structural Equation Models, as detailed below.

5. Because our young adult sample was primarily women, we also examined whether age effects were driven by the gender discrepancy. A two-way ANOVA of gender X age on the five-item SEIS revealed main effects of gender, F(1,695) = 17.31, p< .001, and age, F(1,695) = 8.62, p< .001, with no interaction, F(1,695) = .69, p= .407. We therefore conclude that the age effect is separable from gender. We also tested other measures for gender effects. See Supplementary-3 for tabled results. Results were unsurprising: for example, boys (versus girls) and men (versus young women) were more likely to defend aggressively (ps < .010), and more likely to bully (ps < .029).

6. Adolescents also showed self-esteem importance associations with dire, compliant, and anonymous prosocial behavior. Dire and compliant situations are also “non-ambiguous” – a helping target is either experiencing a crisis, or directly asking for aid – but anonymous situations do not have this attribute.