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Genetic influences on level and stability of self-esteem
Abstract
We attempted to clarify the relation between self-esteem level (high vs. low) and perceived self-esteem stability (within-person variability) by using a behavioral genetics approach. We tested whether the same or independent genetic and environmental influences impact on level and stability. Adolescent twin siblings (n = 183 pairs) completed level and stability scales at two time points. Heritability for both was substantial. The remaining variance in each was attributable to non-shared environmental influences. Shared environmental influences were not significant. Level and stability of self-esteem shared common antecedents via genetic and non-shared environmental influences. Nonetheless, stability was influenced by substantial unique genetic and non-shared environmental influences. The results validate the notion that level and stability are partially autonomous components of self-esteem.
... Instability of self-esteem, i.e., individual variability in the level of self-esteem over time, is recognized as another qualitative aspect of self-esteem that is positively correlated with contingent self-esteem (Crocker, Karpinski, Quinn, & Chase, 2003;Kernis & Goldman, 2006). Behavior-genetic studies of the instability of self-esteem have reported comparable outcomes to those for level of self-esteem, in that additive genetic influences are substantial, and that non-shared environmental factors explain most of the remaining variance (Neiss et al., 2002(Neiss et al., , 2006. Nonetheless, instability has been shown to be influenced by unique genetic and unique environmental factors, which indicates that level and instability of self-esteem are partly independent constructs. ...
... However, several behavior-genetic studies have investigated global or domain-specific self-esteem, which probably shares a common core with contingent self-esteem. Heritability estimates of around 35% for performance-based self-esteem are in line with previous findings on the genetic contributions of 30% -50% to global and domain-specific self-esteem; our findings on self-esteem variability are very much in line with previous findings (Kendler et al., 1998;Neiss et al., 2002Neiss et al., , 2006. Also, our heritability estimates of performancebased self-esteem correspond to common findings on genetic influences on various personality dimensions, which usually account for one-third or more of the phenotypic variances on these dimensions (Bouchard & McGue, 2003). ...
... Regarding age differences, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of the level and variability of self-esteem have presented stable (Neiss et al., 2006), or only slightly decreasing, genetic influences with age (Jonassaint, 2010;Raevuori et al., 2007). In the present study, when analyzing potential age-group differences in genetic and environmental influences on performance-based self-esteem, no such age effect was found. ...
Contingent self-esteem has regularly been associated with socialization experiences. In the present study, genetic and environmental influences on a contingent self-esteem construct were investigated among women and men in different age groups. The study sample consisted of 21,703 same and opposite sex Swedish twins, aged 20 to 46 years. Contingent self-esteem was measured on a scale for performance-based self-esteem. Sex and age-group effects were assessed using biometrical model fitting procedures. Individual differences in performance-based self-esteem were best explained by additive genetic and non-shared environmental factors for both female and male twins, with similar heritability estimates. No age-group effects were found. However, partially different genes seem to influence performance-based self-esteem among women and men.
... Third, we established the heritability of self-enhancement. An emerging literature indicates that self-regard (including self-esteem, name-liking, and narcissism) is heritable Luo, Shi, et al., 2014;Neiss et al., 2002Neiss et al., , 2006Vernon et al., 2008). Our finding on the heritability of the BTAE complemented this literature. ...
... It is possible that genetic factors influence the BTAE and other self-enhancement indicators via neural mechanisms (Cai, Wu, Shi, Gu, & Sedikides, 2016). Nonetheless, our results, in conjunction with previous findings on the heritability of self-esteem and narcissism Luo, Shi, et al., 2014;Neiss et al., 2002Neiss et al., , 2006Vernon et al., 2008), indicate that nonshared environments make a large contribution (40-72%) to individual differences in self-enhancement. Therefore, nonshared environments (e.g., parenting, schooling) are also crucial in that respect. ...
Self-enhancement, the motive to view oneself in positive light, and its manifestations have received wide attention in behavioral sciences. The self-enhancement manifestations vary on a continuum from a subjective level (agentic narcissism, communal narcissism, narcissistic grandiosity) through an intermediate level (better-than-average judgments) to an objective level (overclaiming one’s knowledge). Prior research has established the heritability of self-enhancement manifestations at the subjective and intermediate levels. The present twin study demonstrated that (1) the objective level of self-enhancement manifestation is also heritable, (2) a common core, which is moderately heritable, underlies the three levels of self-enhancement manifestations, (3) the relation between self-enhancement (manifested at all three levels) and psychological wellbeing is partly heritable, and (4) environmental influences, either shared by or unique to family members, are evident through (1), (2), and (3). The findings deepen understanding of the etiology of individual differences in self-enhancement and their links to psychological wellbeing.
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... All of these traits have been shown to have a relationship with well-being Carver and Scheier, 1999;Peterson, 1999;Tsaousis et al., 2007), including that related to work-family satisfaction (Boyer and Mosley, 2007), employment (Judge and Larsen, 2001), and SFWB beyond that of income Ng and Diener, 2014). Further, these individual difference variables-neuroticism, self-esteem, generalized selfefficacy, and locus of control-have been shown to exhibit substantial heritability and consistency over time (Trzesniewski et al., 2003;Neiss et al., 2006). Also, the interrelationships among them can be describes as being a function of a higher-order factor (Judge et al., 2002). ...
... On the other hand, a part of this relationship is environmentally influenced. Each of us has a unique environment that shapes our personality and makes us different from even genetically identical siblings (Neiss et al., 2006). The environmental component underlying the CSE-SFWB relationship shows that the experiences that form our personality also influence our SFWB. ...
... These twin studies reported substantial genetic influences on individual differences (i.e., heritability) in explicit self-esteem and affect. Heritability estimates ranged between 30 and 50%, while estimates of shared environmental contributions to the variance were comparatively small or not significant (Baker et al. 1992;Kamakura et al. 2001;Kendler et al. 1998;Neiss et al. 2002Neiss et al. , 2005Neiss et al. , 2006Raevuori et al. 2007;Roy et al. 1995). ...
... Nevertheless, we controlled for age and sex in all subsequent analyses. Furthermore, for the behavioral genetic analysis, we used standardized age-and sexresidualized scores for all subsequent model analyses (see Neiss et al. 2006). ...
In today's world, researchers frequently utilize indirect measures of implicit (i.e., automatic, spontaneous) evaluations. The results of several studies have supported the usefulness of these measures in predicting behavior, as compared to utilizing direct measures of explicit (i.e., purposeful, deliberate) evaluations. A current, under-debate issue concerns the origin of these implicit evaluations. The present genetically sensitive multi-group study analyzed data from 223 twin pairs and 222 biological core families to estimate possible genetic and environmental sources of individual differences in implicit and explicit self-esteem and affect. The results show that implicit self-esteem and affect maintain a substantial genetic basis, but demonstrate little influence from the shared environment by siblings (e.g., shared familial socialization in childhood). A bivariate analysis found that implicit and explicit evaluations of the same construct share a common genetic core which aligns with the motivation and opportunity as determinants (MODE) model.
... Third, we established the heritability of self-enhancement. An emerging literature indicates that self-regard (including self-esteem, name-liking, and narcissism) is heritable Luo, Shi, et al., 2014;Neiss et al., 2002Neiss et al., , 2006Vernon et al., 2008). Our finding on the heritability of the BTAE complemented this literature. ...
... It is possible that genetic factors influence the BTAE and other selfenhancement indicators via neural mechanisms (Cai, Wu, Shi, Gu, & Sedikides, In Press). Nonetheless, our results, in conjunction with previous findings on the heritability of selfesteem and narcissism Luo, Shi, et al., 2014;Neiss et al., 2002Neiss et al., , 2006Vernon et al., 2008), indicate that nonshared environments make a large contribution (40-72%) to individual differences in self-enhancement. Therefore, nonshared environments (e.g., parenting, schooling) are also crucial in that respect. ...
We addressed phenotypic and genetic research questions regarding nostalgia and self-enhancement. At the phenotypic level (178 university students; Study 1), we found that nostalgia was moderately associated with self-enhancement. At the genotypic level (232 twin pairs; Study 2), we found that nostalgia, self-enhancement, and their relation were largely heritable. Our findings shed light on two heavily investigated traits and open up exciting research directions.
... In empirical studies, trait level and stability of self-esteem are often negatively correlated 1 (e.g., r = −.31, Okada, 2010), and genetic and environmental factors contribute to both the level and stability of self-esteem (Kamakura, Ando, & Ono, 2001;neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006). In particular, a twin study by neiss et al. (2006) identified substantial genetic (45%) and non-shared environmental (52%) influences on self-esteem stability. ...
... To investigate the fit of alternative models, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was used as the general modelling framework. Parameters were estimated by Full Information Maximum likelihood (Ml) using the Mplus 5.1 program (Muthén & Muthén, 2006). The following criteria were used to evaluate the goodness of fit: χ 2 likelihood ratio statistic, Comparative Fit Index (CFI), and the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) with associated 90% confidence intervals (CI). ...
This study evaluates the temporal structure of daily self-esteem and the relative contribution of a range of theoretically motivated predictors of daily self-esteem. To assess self-esteem stability, a daily version of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (RSE, Rosenberg, 1965) was administered to 278 undergraduates for five consecutive days. These short-term longitudinal data were analysed using the Trait State Error (TSE) modelling framework. The TSE decomposes multi-wave data into three components: (1) a stable trait component, (2) a state component, and (3) an error component. Significant predictors of the trait component of self-esteem observed across five days were: (1) emotional stability, and (2) the congruence between implicit and explicit self-esteem. Significant predictors of the state components of self-esteem were daily positive and negative events. We discuss the implications of these results for future research concerning self-esteem stability.
... Indeed, many of the topics mentioned above as integrating the study of self and personality, have now been studied from a neuroscience perspective, including the neural bases of pride (Takahashi et al., 2007), attachment (Gillath, Bunge, Shaver, Wendelken, & Mikulincer, 2005), autobiographical memory (Levine, 2004), and self-regulation (Inzlicht & Gutsell, 2007). Building on this emerging biological account, researchers have also discussed the evolutionary origins of the self (Sedikides & Skowronski, 2003) and explored the genetics of self-esteem and other self processes (e.g., Neiss et al., 2005;Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006). ...
... The eminent geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1964) remarked that the self is the chief evolutionary novelty possessed by humans. Consistent with this view, behavioral genetic studies have documented the heritability of self-esteem and other self processes (e.g., Neiss et al., 2005;Neiss et al., 2006). Evidence of heritability supports an evolutionary account of the self, but there are four possible interpretations. ...
... Conceiving self-esteem as a stable cognitive and affective structure that rests upon inherited potentials and whose development largely depends upon earlier experiences of acceptance, attachment and recognition (Brown, 1998;Harter, 2006), we rea-soned that self-esteem may predict emotional self-efficacy beliefs. This is because experiencing oneself as an individual of value may operate as a major lens through which individuals view and evaluate their experience in the world Harter, 2006;Kendler, Gardner, & Prescott, 1998;Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006). In sum, we maintain that individuals may use self-esteem judgments as a basis for formulating, practicing, and further strengthening the abilities that are at the basis of emotional self-efficacy beliefs (in this regard, see also Harter, 2006). ...
... Furthermore, these results seem to suggest a developmental primacy for self-esteem, which seems to be congruent with our argument that self-esteem likely acts as a ''lens'' through which individuals view and evaluate their experience in the world, and thus their feeling of competence. The significant role of heredity and child's earliest life experiences in shaping feelings of self-esteem Kendler et al., 1998;Neiss et al., 2006) seems further to corroborate this argument, although it is still hard to conclude that the development of emotional self-efficacy beliefs is rooted in self-esteem, rather than vice versa. ...
The present study examines the longitudinal relations between self-esteem and perceived affective self-regulatory efficacy (i.e., self-efficacy beliefs in managing negative emotions and in expressing positive emotions). Participants were a group of 206 late adolescents (47% males) aged 16, 18, 20 and 24 years at T1, T2, T3 and T4, respectively. Findings corroborated the posited paths of mutual relations, while pointing to a major contribution of self-esteem in predicting perceived affective self-regulatory efficacy across time. In particular, self-esteem consistently predicted subsequent levels of self-efficacy beliefs in managing negative emotions and in expressing positive emotions. Paths in the opposite direction were significant but small. Findings are discussed in light of the contributions of perceived affective self-regulatory efficacy to promote self-esteem from 16 to 24 years.
... Much of the research on the instability of SE has been done by Kernis and colleagues (e.g., Kernis, Cornell, Sun, Berry, & Harlow, 1993). Broadly speaking, this research suggests that SE instability is a trait-like characteristic that is negatively related to, but distinct from, level of SE (correlations range from 7.1 to 7.5; see also Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006). Moreover, SE instability has been found to be negatively related to various measures of well-being, relationships that are frequently qualified by interactions with level of SE ( Gable & Nezlek, 1998). ...
... Although it tends to be modestly and inversely related to SE level, SE instability appears to represent a distinct dimension of the self (cf. Neiss et al., 2006). Nevertheless, SE instability may be a specific measure (an s factor) of a more general individual difference in emotional reactivity or lability (a g factor). ...
... Moreover, we considered the full set of 20 traits contained in the Personality Research Form (PRF; Jackson, 1999c) and the full set of 15 traits contained JMP 22,3 in the Jackson Personality Inventory (JPI; Jackson, 1977Jackson, , 1994. Based on the original work of Murray (1938), the PRF was designed to comprehensively reflect the full range of traits of the normal personality (Jackson, 1999c). The JPI was designed to capture a wide range of traits gleaned from research in personality and social psychology on the basis of their likely relevance to an individual's functioning (Jackson, 1977(Jackson, , 1994. ...
... Only two traits have been the subject of concerted empirical research relevant to the link between self-raters' personality and self-other discrepancies in job performance ratings, Self-Esteem and Narcissism. The conceptual link between Self-Esteem and higher self-than other-ratings is clear -higher Self-Esteem reflects higher valuation of the self (Neiss et al., 2006) and this higher self-valuation is likely to extend to one's own deeds and actions as captured by self-ratings of performance. Empirically, Shrauger and Terbovic (1976) as well as Baird (1977) results suggest that self-raters with high levels of Self-Esteem will tend to inflate their job performance ratings relative to the ratings of others. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships between a priori‐chosen personality traits and the tendency for a manager to rate his/her job performance more favourably than well‐acquainted superiors, peers, and subordinates do.
Design/methodology/approach
The job performance of 204 managers was evaluated using multi‐source (i.e. 360E) ratings (self, subordinates, peers, and superiors). Managers also completed personality measures. Relationships between managers' personality and the tendency for managers to rate their own job performance higher than subordinates, peers, and superiors did were analyzed using advanced regression techniques.
Findings
The paper finds that self‐superior and self‐peer disagreement in performance ratings (i.e. self‐rating inflation) was associated with high Achievement and high Self‐Esteem. Additionally, self‐superior disagreement (i.e. self‐rating deflation) was associated with high Anxiety. Self‐subordinate disagreement was not associated with self‐rater personality.
Research limitations/implications
The paper studied a single sample of financial services managers. Generalization requires cross‐validation with other occupational groups and organizations.
Practical implications
Human resources professionals should be informed that self‐superior and self‐peer disagreement (i.e. self‐rating inflation) in multi‐source job performance ratings is potentially beneficial because it is associated with personality traits that can facilitate positive responses to feedback. Peers and superiors should therefore not inflate their ratings of managers in an effort to reduce self‐superior and self‐peer disagreement in ratings.
Originality/value
This study improved upon most previous investigations of this topic by using a field setting, considering a wider range of personality variables, using 360( job performance ratings (self‐, supervisor‐, peer‐, and subordinate‐ratings) rather than just a subset of these rating sources, and employing superior statistical procedures.
... Finally, parental treatment is not the only precursor to explicit and implicit self-esteem. There is evidence for a substantial influence of genes on the level and stability of explicit self-esteem (Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006) and on implicit attitudes ( Osinsky et al., 2010). ...
... Finally, parental treatment is not the only precursor to explicit and implicit self-esteem. There is evidence for a substantial influence of genes on the level and stability of explicit self-esteem ( Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006) and on implicit attitudes ( Osinsky et al., 2010). Our study has implications for therapy with patients with NPD. ...
Background and objectives:
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is characterized by reports of grandiosity including exaggerated illusions of superiority and entitlement (DSM-IV-TR, APA, 2000). Based on clinical theories (e.g., Kernberg, 1975), many researchers argue that high explicit self-esteem in narcissists masks underlying implicit vulnerability (low implicit self-esteem). Conversely, based on social learning theories (i.e., Millon, 1981), people with NPD are characterized by implicit grandiosity (high implicit self-esteem). We test these competing hypotheses in patients diagnosed with NPD.
Methods:
The present study examined implicit self-esteem (using an Implicit Association Test) and explicit self-esteem (using a self-report questionnaire) in patients with NPD in comparison to non-clinical and clinical, non-NPD (Borderline Personality Disorder, BPD) control groups.
Results:
Patients with NPD scored lower on explicit self-esteem than non-clinical controls. In comparison to patients with BPD, NPD patients scored higher on explicit and implicit self-esteem. Moreover, within the group of NPD patients, damaged self-esteem (i.e., low explicit, high implicit) was associated with higher narcissistic psychopathology.
Limitations:
In both clinical groups we included participants seeking psychiatric treatment, which might influence explicit self-esteem. Longitudinal studies are needed to further assess self-esteem stability in NPD patients in comparison to the control groups.
Conclusions:
Our findings are indicative of vulnerable facets in patients with NPD (i.e., low explicit self-esteem). Furthermore, damaged self-esteem is connected to specific psychopathology within the NPD group. Implications for research on NPD are discussed.
... Indeed, many of the topics mentioned above as integrating the study of self and personality, have now been studied from a neuroscience perspective, including the neural bases of pride (Takahashi et al., 2007), attachment (Gillath, Bunge, Shaver, Wendelken, & Mikulincer, 2005), autobiographical memory (Levine, 2004), and self-regulation (Inzlicht & Gutsell, 2007). Building on this emerging biological account, researchers have also discussed the evolutionary origins of the self (Sedikides & Skowronski, 2003) and explored the genetics of self-esteem and other self processes (e.g., Neiss et al., 2005; Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006). What unites many of these perspectives is a naturalist view of the self—a belief that the self can be studied like any other natural phenomenon. ...
... The eminent geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1964) remarked that the self is the chief evolutionary novelty possessed by humans. Consistent with this view, behavioral genetic studies have documented the heritability of self-esteem and other self processes (e.g., Neiss et al., 2005; Neiss et al., 2006). Evidence of heritability supports an evolutionary account of the self, but there are four possible interpretations. ...
... Much of the research on the instability of SE has been done by Kernis and colleagues (e.g., Kernis, Cornell, Sun, Berry, & Harlow, 1993). Broadly speaking, this research suggests that SE instability is a trait-like characteristic that is negatively related to, but distinct from, level of SE (correlations range from 7.1 to 7.5; see also Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006). Moreover, SE instability has been found to be negatively related to various measures of well-being, relationships that are frequently qualified by interactions with level of SE (Gable & Nezlek, 1998). ...
... Although it tends to be modestly and inversely related to SE level, SE instability appears to represent a distinct dimension of the self (cf. Neiss et al., 2006). Nevertheless, SE instability may be a specific measure (an s factor) of a more general individual difference in emotional reactivity or lability (a g factor). ...
The present research examined the relationships among self-esteem level, temporal self-esteem instability, gender, and self-reported aggression. Self-esteem level was negatively related to attitudinal aggression, although this relationship varied as a joint function of self-esteem instability and gender. It was strongest among men with unstable self-esteem and among women with stable self-esteem. Although self-esteem instability and narcissism (Study 3) were each positively related to behavioral aggression, the relationship between narcissism and attitudinal aggression varied as a function of self-esteem instability. The relationship between narcissism and attitudinal aggression was positive among people with stable self-esteem, but negative among people with unstable self-esteem, regardless of gender. The importance of considering gender, self-esteem instability, and narcissism in the self-esteem/aggression debate is discussed.
... Consequently, identifying predictors of self-esteem change, especially during important life transitions, is of great importance to improve positive outcomes for individuals and society. Sources of self-esteem development are not only internal or biological (Kendler et al., 1998), but in large part environmental in nature (Neiss et al., 2006(Neiss et al., , 2009). Based on a role transition perspective, and guided by social investment and sociometer theories, the present study investigated changes in self-esteem trajectories T A B L E 5 Effects of educational expectations, graduation, age at first job, type of job, and covariates on self-esteem trajectories during the school-to-work transition. ...
Introduction:
Previous studies examined the trajectory of self-esteem during critical developmental periods and over the life-span. However, little is known about how self-esteem changes during the school-to-work transition.
Method:
We examined the effect of beginning a job for the first time on self-esteem development, using data from 368 adolescents assessed up to six times across a 14-year time span. Specifically, we analyzed the pattern of self-esteem change during the transition to work and whether the self-esteem trajectory varied as a function of several school- and job-related variables, while controlling for important covariates.
Results:
Results revealed linear increases in self-esteem across the 14-year study period, with partial support that the rate of increase slowed slightly after the school-to-work transition. We found significantly greater variability in the slopes after the transition, supporting the idea that people differ in the way they cope with the developmental tasks associated with important life transitions. We also found evidence for an interaction between college graduation and educational expectations, such that the positive effect of college graduation on self-esteem change was stronger for those who graduated with low (vs. high) educational expectations.
Conclusion:
School-to-work transition has an effect on self-esteem development. Developmental processes of findings were discussed.
... Although SE level may be associated with smartphone use, the association seems to be conditional because SE level manifests short-term fluctuations in momentary which is described as SE stability (Kernis, Grannemann, & Mathis, 1991). Multiple methods based on standard deviations and selfreport questionnaires have validated the existence of SE stability (Dykman, 1998;Kernis et al., 1991;Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006;Webster, Smith, Brunell, Paddock, & Nezlek, 2017). According to the perspective of the heterogeneity of SE, SE stability, as an independent and distinct facet of SE (Okada, 2010), moderates the effects of SE level on psychological reactions and functioning (Kernis, 2005;Kernis et al., 1991;Kernis et al., 1993). ...
Previous research has focused exclusively on generalized smartphone use, whereas an increasing number of studies have begun to examine specific smartphone use, including use patterns and use passion. Smartphone use has been found to be associated with self-esteem level, wherein this association might be influenced by self-esteem stability according to the perspective of the heterogeneity of self-esteem. This study aimed to examine the interactive effect of self-esteem level and stability on different types of smartphone use. The results based on the responses from 1324 Chinese secondary school students showed that self-esteem level had stronger associations with learning-related use, social interaction use, and entertainment use, and with harmonious and obsessive use passion among Chinese adolescents with high self-esteem stability compared with those with low self-esteem stability. The findings not only identify different smartphone use but also unravel its underlying mechanisms from the perspective of the heterogeneity of self-esteem, which lends support for the interventions to promote appropriate smartphone use and avoid inappropriate smartphone use.
... As stated above, results from empirical studies point to the need of studying GSE variability over time. For example, the twin study by Neiss et al. (2006) found that genetic and nonshared environmental influences differently affected GSE mean levels and GSE instability. ...
In this study, we addressed the relevance of the state-trait variance decomposition
of global self-esteem (GSE) in organizational research. We used a longitudinal sample
of 393 military cadets followed for 2 years (nT2 = 376) and adopted Latent Curve—
Latent State-Trait models for separating stable and transient factors in GSE and in
three work-related variables (e.g., work engagement, affective commitment, in-role/
extra-role performance). Although literature often considered GSE a trait-like variable,
our results showed that it has a significant state variance that positively covaried
with the state components of all three work-related variables included in our
study. Thus, we suggest rejecting the rigid separation between “state-constructs”
and “trait-constructs”, and recommend a paradigm that focuses on the trait and state
components of each psychological construct.
... These results confirmed our first hypothesis (H1). Individuals with high self-esteem are happier and have an optimistic attitude toward the future and a better frame of mind (Jain, 2019;Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006). High self-esteem is associated with positive affect and better performance in solving problems and overcoming difficulties; it also helps build and strengthens confidence in one's own competence (Trzebińska, 2008). ...
... With respect to parental factors, several risk factors, such as mental health issues, self-esteem, and emotion regulation, have been found to be in part heritable (Cross-Disorder Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, 2013;Hawn, Overstreet, Stewart, & Amstadter, 2015;Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006;Nivard et al., 2015;Stieger, Kandler, Tran, Pietschnig, & Voracek, 2017). However, it is not yet known whether and to what extent perpetrating child maltreatment is heritable. ...
Child maltreatment has been associated with various cumulative risk factors. However, little is known about the extent to which genetic and environmental factors contribute to individual differences between parents in perpetrating child maltreatment. To estimate the relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to perpetrating maltreatment we used a parent-based extended family design. Child-reported perpetrated maltreatment was available for 556 parents (283 women) from 63 families. To explore reporter effects (i.e., child perspective on maltreatment), child reports were compared to multi-informant reports. Based on polygenic model analyses, most of the variance related to the perpetration of physical abuse and emotional neglect was explained by common environmental factors (physical abuse: c² = 59%, SE = 12%, p = .006; emotional neglect: c² = 47%, SE = 8%, p < .001) whereas genetic factors did not significantly contribute to the model. For perpetrated emotional abuse, in contrast, genetic factors did significantly contribute to perpetrated emotional abuse ( h² = 33%, SE = 8%, p < .001), whereas common environment factors did not. Multi-informant reports led to similar estimates of genetic and common environmental effects on all measures except for emotional abuse, where a multi-informant approach yielded higher estimates of the common environmental effects. Overall, estimates of unique environment, including measurement error, were lower using multi-informant reports. In conclusion, our findings suggest that genetic pathways play a significant role in perpetrating emotional abuse, while physical abuse and emotional neglect are transmitted primarily through common environmental factors. These findings imply that interventions may need to target different mechanisms dependings on maltreatment type.
... Cross-cultural generality has been reported in regard to the Big Five personality structure (De Raad, Perugini, Hrebickova, & Szarota, 1998;Katigbak, Church, Guanzon-Lapena, Carlota, & del Pilar, 2002;McCrae & Costa, 1997), values (Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987), the relation between cognitive structure (i.e., implicit theories) and judgment (i.e., dispositional attribution; Chiu, Hong, & Dweck, 1997), the secure base phenomenon in mother-child interactions (Posada et al., 1995), emotion (Russell, 1991), sex differences in mate pref- erences (Buss, 1989), in-group bias and distrust of out-group members (Brewer, 1979;Islam & Hewstone, 1993;Insko, Schopler, & Sedikides, 1998), intragroup hierarchical structures (Barkow, 1989), and developmental processes (Rowe, Vazsonyi, & Flannery, 1994). More relevant to the cultural-self perspective, self-esteem (as mentioned previously) is subject to strong genetic influences (Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2002a;Neiss et al., 2002b). Although the self-esteem samples in this research were derived from Western culture, there is no reason to expect sub- stantial deviation in Eastern samples. ...
The culture movement challenged the universality of the self-enhancement motive by proposing that the motive is pervasive in individualistic cultures (the West) but absent in collectivistic cultures (the East). The present research posited that Westerners and Easterners use different tactics to achieve the same goal: positive self-regard. Study 1 tested participants from differing cultural backgrounds (the United States vs. Japan), and Study 2 tested participants of differing self-construals (independent vs. interdependent). Americans and independents self-enhanced on individualistic attributes, whereas Japanese and interdependents self-enhanced on collectivistic attributes. Independents regarded individualistic attributes, whereas interdependents regarded collectivistic attributes, as personally important. Attribute importance mediated self-enhancement. Regardless of cultural background or self-construal, people self-enhance on personally important dimensions. Self-enhancement is a universal human motive.
... Classical twin design studies have yielded a fairly consistent picture of individual differences in self-esteem as being mostly explained by additive genetic influences and non-shared environmental influences. Across studies, the heritability of various self-esteem measures has typically ranged between 30-40%, with most of the remaining variance attributable to non-shared environmental influences (including random error variance), and no or only negligible influences of the shared environment (Kamakura, Ando, & Ono, 2007;Kendler, Gardner, & Prescott, 1998;McGuire, Neiderhiser, Reiss, Hetherington, & Plomin, 1994;Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006;Neiss, Stevenson, Legrand, Iacono, & Sedikides, 2009;Raevuori et al., 2007;Roy, Neale, & Kendler, 1995; for a review see, Neiss et al., 2002). For instance, Kendler et al. (1998) used data from 3756 twin pairs, aged between 18 and 60 years, to examine the genetic, shared, and non-shared environmental influences on self-esteem as measured with a short form of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965). ...
Twin studies suggest that both genes and environments influence the emergence and development of individual differences in self-esteem. However, different lines of research have emphasized either the role of genes or of environmental influences in shaping self-esteem, and the pathways through which genes and environments exert their influence on self-esteem remain largely unclear. In this study, we used nationally representative data from over 2,000 German twin families and a nuclear twin family design (NTFD) to further our understanding of the genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in self-esteem. Compared to classical twin designs (CTD), NTFDs allow for finer-grained descriptions of the genetic and environmental influences on phenotypic variation, produce less biased estimates of those effects, and provide more information about different environmental influences and gene-environment correlation that contribute to siblings’ similarity. Our NTFD results suggested that additive and non-additive genetic influences contributed to individual differences in self-esteem as well as environmental influences that are both shared and not shared by twins. The shared environmental component mostly reflected non-parental influences. These findings highlight the increased sensitivity afforded by NTFDs but also remaining limitations that need to be addressed by future behavioral genetic work on the sources of self-esteem.
... First, there are many biological differences among Blacks, Whites, and Asians (Molnar 2006;Rushton 1995;Sarich and Miele 2005). Second, self-esteem is at least moderately heritable (Jonassaint 2010;Neiss et al. 2006). And third, the differences in self-esteem, Blacks highest, Asians lowest, and Whites in the middle, do appear to cohere with a suite of hypothesized and known differences among the groups (Rushton 1995;Meisenberg and Woodley 2013;Minkov and Bond 2015;Templer 2008). ...
Many evolutionary psychologists have asserted
that there is a panhuman nature, a species typical psychological
structure that is invariant across human populations.
Although many social scientists dispute the basic assumptions
of evolutionary psychology, they seem widely to agree with
this hypothesis. Psychological differences among human populations
(demes, ethnic groups, races) are almost always attributed
to cultural and sociological forces in the relevant literatures.
However, there are strong reasons to suspect that the
hypothesis of a panhuman nature is incorrect. Humans migrated
out of Africa at least 50,000 years ago and occupied many
different ecological and climatological niches. Because of
this, they evolved slightly different anatomical and physiological
traits. For example, Tibetans evolved various traits that
help them cope with the rigors of altitude; similarly, the Inuit
evolved various traits that help them cope with the challenges
of a very cold environment. It is likely that humans also
evolved slightly different psychological traits as a response
to different selection pressures in different environments and
niches. One possible example is the high intelligence of the
Ashkenazi Jewish people. Frank discussions of such differences
among human groups have provoked strong ethical
concerns in the past. We understand those ethical concerns
and believe that it is important to address them. However,
we also believe that the benefits of discussing possible human
population differences outweigh the costs.
... First, there are many biological differences among Blacks, Whites, and Asians (Molnar 2006;Rushton 1995;Sarich and Miele 2005). Second, self-esteem is at least moderately heritable (Jonassaint 2010;Neiss et al. 2006). And third, the differences in self-esteem, Blacks highest, Asians lowest, and Whites in the middle, do appear to cohere with a suite of hypothesized and known differences among the groups (Rushton 1995;Meisenberg and Woodley 2013;Minkov and Bond 2015;Templer 2008). ...
Many evolutionary psychologists have asserted
that there is a panhuman nature, a species typical psychological
structure that is invariant across human populations.
Although many social scientists dispute the basic assumptions
of evolutionary psychology, they seem widely to agree with
this hypothesis. Psychological differences among human populations
(demes, ethnic groups, races) are almost always attributed
to cultural and sociological forces in the relevant literatures.
However, there are strong reasons to suspect that the
hypothesis of a panhuman nature is incorrect. Humans migrated
out of Africa at least 50,000 years ago and occupied many
different ecological and climatological niches. Because of
this, they evolved slightly different anatomical and physiological
traits. For example, Tibetans evolved various traits that
help them cope with the rigors of altitude; similarly, the Inuit
evolved various traits that help them cope with the challenges
of a very cold environment. It is likely that humans also
evolved slightly different psychological traits as a response
to different selection pressures in different environments and
niches. One possible example is the high intelligence of the
Ashkenazi Jewish people. Frank discussions of such differences
among human groups have provoked strong ethical
concerns in the past. We understand those ethical concerns
and believe that it is important to address them. However,
we also believe that the benefits of discussing possible human
population differences outweigh the costs.
... The test-retest stability of self-esteem is remarkably high over time periods as long as 75 years ( bib48 Trzesniewski et al., 2003). Moreover, the heritability of self-esteem (i.e., the percentage of variance attributed to genetic factors) is quite comparable to that of the Big 5 personality traits ( bib27 Neiss et al., 2006). Finally, we know of very few studies that have shown that trait reports of self-esteem can be altered by situational feedback. ...
The article seeks to integrate personality and social psychology in a manner that enriches both, particularly with reference to the self and its processes. It is suggested that the typical approach to personality assessment must somewhat necessarily be assessing variations in people's self-concepts and that the beliefs assessed are likely to be generalized (i.e., not very contextual) in nature. Such generalized views of the self will have predictive value, but also predictive limitations. It is further suggested that social psychological views of how personality traits operate may have considerable merit, although there are several ways in which the personality trait literature counters or at least qualifies assumptions made in the social psychology literature. Overall, the personality–self interface appears to be a particularly generative one in understanding individual differences and how they function.
... The extent to which they feel positive (vs. negative) about themselves on average (i.e., state self-esteem level) and the extent to which this self-evaluation fluctuates (vs. is stable; i.e., NARCISSISM AND STATE SELF-ESTEEM 5 self-esteem fragility; e.g., Jordan & Zeigler-Hill, 2013; Kernis, 2003; 2005; Kernis, Cornell, Sun, Berry, & Harlow, 1993; Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006). Explaining these individual differences in level and fragility of state self-esteem, personality research has identified a number of associated personality traits (e.g., neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness; Meier, Orth, Denissen, & Kühnel, 2011; Zeigler-Hill et al., 2015). ...
Different theoretical conceptualizations characterize grandiose narcissists by high, yet fragile self-esteem. Empirical evidence, however, has been inconsistent, particularly regarding the relationship between narcissism and self-esteem fragility (i.e., self-esteem variability). Here, we aim at unraveling this inconsistency by disentangling the effects of two theoretically distinct facets of narcissism (i.e., admiration and rivalry) on the two aspects of state self-esteem (i.e., level and variability). We report on data from a laboratory-based and two field-based studies (total N = 596) in realistic social contexts, capturing momentary, daily, and weekly fluctuations of state self-esteem. To estimate unbiased effects of narcissism on the level and variability of self-esteem within one model, we applied mixed-effects location scale models. Results of the three studies and their meta-analytical integration indicated that narcissism is positively linked to self-esteem level and variability. When distinguishing between admiration and rivalry, however, an important dissociation was identified: Admiration was related to high (and rather stable) levels of state self-esteem, whereas rivalry was related to (rather low and) fragile self-esteem. Analyses on underlying processes suggest that effects of rivalry on self-esteem variability are based on stronger decreases in self-esteem from one assessment to the next, particularly after a perceived lack of social inclusion. The revealed differentiated effects of admiration and rivalry explain why the analysis of narcissism as a unitary concept has led to the inconsistent past findings and provide deeper insights into the intrapersonal dynamics of grandiose narcissism governing state self-esteem. (PsycINFO Database Record
... For instance, compared to people with stable self-esteem, people with unstable self-esteem report a higher frequency of depressive symptoms when facing daily challenges, possibly because they tend to over-generalize the negative implications of domainspecific failure (Kernis et al., 1998). Neiss, Sedikides, and Stevenson (2006) have examined the perceived self-esteem stability and found substantial heritability. However, we still do not know how genetic and environmental factors would influence the real short-term stability of self-esteem. ...
The pursuit of self-knowledge possesses a long history in philosophy around the world (in both East and West). But in the field of psychology, the first account of the self did not appear until 1890 when William James devoted an entire chapter to it in his classic book Principles of Psychology (James, 1890). Thereafter, the self has remained one of the most researched topics in psychology (Tesser, 2000), particularly since the 1960s. In this chapter, we review the cumulative literatures on self-esteem and self-concept, two core components of the self, from the perspective of behavioural genetics.
... We would like to explicate further the relevance of the self-centrality breeds self-enhancement principle for the relation between agency-communion and self-esteem. Personality and self-esteem are among the most basic and most genetically grounded traits (Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006;Neiss et al., 2009). Thus, static and hard-wired relations between these traits could have been a distinct possibility. ...
Identifying the “prosocial personality” is a classic project in personality psychology. However, personality traits have been elusive predictors of prosocial behavior, with personality-prosociality relations varying widely across sociocultural contexts. We propose the social motives perspective to account for such sociocultural inconsistencies. According to this perspective, a focal quality of agency (e.g., competence, independence, openness) is the motive to swim against the social tide—agentic social contrast. Conversely, a focal quality of communion (e.g., warmth, interdependence, agreeableness) is the motive to swim with the social tide—communal social assimilation. We report two cross-sectional studies. Study 1 (N = 131,562) defined social context at the country level (11 European countries), whereas Study 2 (N = 56,395) defined it at the country level (11 European countries) and the city level (296 cities within these countries). Communion predicted interest in prosocial behavior comparatively strongly in sociocultural contexts where such interest was common and comparatively weakly where such interest was uncommon. Agency predicted interest in prosocial behavior comparatively strongly in sociocultural contexts where such interest was uncommon and comparatively weakly where such interest was common. The results supported the social motives perspective. Also, the findings help to reestablish the importance of personality for understanding prosociality.
... In the previous sections, we learned that the self fulfills several criteria of an adaptive design (as outlined by Williams, 1966): the self is universal, complex, and reliably developing. Furthermore, behavioral genetic studies have shown that self-esteem and other self-processes are heritable (e.g., Neiss et al., 2005;Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006), and brain scientists have begun to identify neural mechanisms that seem to support self-processes (e.g., Freeman & Beer, 2010;Kelley et al., 2002). Given these findings, it is not likely that the self is simply an evolutionary accident or a functionless by-product (Robins et al., 2008). ...
This article provides an overview of theory and research on the self from a naturalist perspective. That is, we conceptualize the human self in the same way as any other natural phenomenon, seeking to understand its structure, ontogeny, evolutionary origins, and underlying neural, cognitive, and affective mechanisms. Each section addresses a fundamental question about the nature and functioning of the human self: What is the self? How many selves do humans have? When does the self emerge? Do humans have accurate self-representations? Where is the self in the brain? How does emotion shape the self? And what are the adaptive functions of the self? For each question, we review relevant theory and research, with an emphasis on individual-differences in self-related processes.
... Some research suggests that it is difficult, if not impossible, to change one's level of happiness. Studies of twins demonstrate that individuals' experience of happiness or related components of happiness, such as optimism and self-esteem may be influenced by their genes (Caprara et al., 2009;Lykken & Tellegen, 1996;Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006;Plomin et al., 1992;Stubbe, Posthuma, Boomsma, & De Geus, 2005). Research on monozygotic twins suggests that even twins reared apart are remarkably similar in their level of well-being (Plomin et al., 1992;Tellegen et al., 1988). ...
Does the explicit attempt to be happier facilitate or obstruct the actual experience of happiness? Two experiments investigated this question using listening to positive music as a happiness-inducing activity. Study 1 showed that participants assigned to try to boost their mood while listening to 12?min of music reported higher positive mood compared to participants who simply listened to music without attempting to alter mood. However, this effect was qualified by the predicted interaction: the music had to be positively valenced (i.e. Copland, not Stravinsky). In Study 2, participants who were instructed to intentionally try to become happier (vs. not trying) reported higher increases in subjective happiness after listening to positively valenced music during five separate lab visits over a two-week period. These studies demonstrate that listening to positive music may be an effective way to improve happiness, particularly when it is combined with an intention to become happier.
... Moreover, average levels of self-esteem invariably lie above theoretical scale midpoint. Second, genes account for substantial variance in levels of self-esteem (Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006). This suggests that cultural variations, at least in those environments so far studied, do not wholly explain trait self-enhancement. ...
Self-enhancement denotes a class of psychological phenomena that involve taking a tendentiously positive view of oneself. We distinguish between four levels of self-enhancement-an observed effect, an ongoing process, a personality trait, and an underlying motive-and then use these distinctions to organize the wealth of relevant research. Furthermore, to render these distinctions intuitive, we draw an extended analogy between self-enhancement and the phenomenon of eating. Among the topics we address are (a) manifestations of self-enhancement, both obvious and subtle, and rival interpretations; (b) experimentally documented dynamics of affirming and threatening the ego; and (c) primacy of self-enhancement, considered alongside other intrapsychic phenomena, and across different cultures. Self-enhancement, like eating, is a fundamental part of human nature.
© 2008 Association for Psychological Science.
... Some research suggests that it is difficult, if not impossible, to change one's level of happiness. Studies of twins demonstrate that individuals' experience of happiness or related components of happiness, such as optimism and self-esteem may be influenced by their genes (Caprara et al., 2009;Lykken & Tellegen, 1996;Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006;Plomin et al., 1992;Stubbe, Posthuma, Boomsma, & De Geus, 2005). Research on monozygotic twins suggests that even twins reared apart are remarkably similar in their level of well-being (Plomin et al., 1992;Tellegen et al., 1988). ...
This study investigated the novel associations between intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations and internal and external domains of contingent self-worth among a sample of 502 Iranian university students. We found a meaningful pattern showing that intrinsic aspirations were positively associated with internal domains, whereas extrinsic aspirations were positively associated with external domains. Our survey data also suggested that the factor structure of the Aspiration Index, as well as the factor structure of the Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale in our Iranian sample were consistent with factor structures of foreign samples. Finally, the types of aspirations and domains of contingencies of self-worth meaningfully predicted variables related to well-being, confirming previous research. We discuss the nature of the associations between the aspirations and the domains of contingent self-worth.
... In addition, we do not formally hypothesize a genetic source of variance in the four variables in the path model, though we do test for heritability in subsequent behavioral genetics models given that it is a necessary condition for some hypotheses that follow. Concerning the heritability of CSE, though only one previous study showed heritability of a measure of CSE for a sample of female twins (Zhu & Arvey, 2006), several studies have supported the genetic basis of some of the individual core traits, namely neuroticism (Jang, Livesley, & Vernon, 1996) and self-esteem (Kendler, Gardner, & Prescott, 1998;Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006). As for job satisfaction, several studies by Arvey and colleagues (Arvey et al., 1989(Arvey et al., , 1994 have found measures of job satisfaction to be heritable. ...
In this study we investigated the mediated influence of core self-evaluations (CSE) on employee health problems via job satisfaction and work stress, and the degree to which genetic factors explain these mediated relationships. Based on data obtained from a sample of 594 Swedish twins (114 monozygotic twin pairs and 183 dizygotic twin pairs), conventional path analysis results supported the mediated effects of CSE on employee health via job satisfaction and work stress, after controlling for conscientiousness and extraversion. Behavioral genetic analyses showed significant heritability of all four variables. Moreover, we found that the mediated relationships via job satisfaction and work stress are explained by genetic factors, such that the genetic source of job satisfaction and work stress mediates the genetic influence of CSE on health problems. These results highlight the role played by genetic factors in better understanding the relationships between CSE, work attitudes, and health outcomes.
... positive self-regard is a product of Western culture and absent in Eastern culture. Challenging that cultural construction perspective is the SCENT model, which, on the basis of evolutionary (Sedikides et al., 2004Sedikides & Skowronski, 2000), behavior genetic (Neiss et al., 2002(Neiss et al., , 2005(Neiss et al., , 2006, and existential (Heine et al., 2002;Pyszczynski et al., 2004;Routledge, Arndt, Sedikides, & Wildschut, 2008) accounts of the fundamental nature of self-regard, postulates that humans are driven to maintain a positive sense of self. The model recognizes that detection of the motive can prove elusive, because it is expressed tactically. ...
Taiwanese participants made better-than-average judgments on collectivistic and individualistic traits, evaluated the personal importance of those traits, and completed measures of psychological adjustment (depression, perceived stress, subjective well-being, and satisfaction with life). Replicating findings from other East Asian samples, participants self-enhanced (i.e., regarded the self as superior to peers) more on collectivistic than individualistic attributes and assigned higher personal importance to the former than the latter. Moreover, better adjusted participants manifested a stronger tendency to self-enhance on personally important attributes. These data are consistent with the view that self-enhancement is a universal human motive that is expressed tactically and at odds with the assertion that self-enhancement is a uniquely Western phenomenon.
... One possibility, of course, is a problematic developmental history, long theorized to underlie narcissism (Kernberg, 1975;Kohut, 1976), and for which some empirical evidence has recently emerged (e.g., Otway & Vignoles, 2006). However, non-family factors also merit consideration, especially given that genes and shared environment are known to be better predictors of the related constructs of self-esteem and self-esteem stability (Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006). In addition, an intriguing genes-byenvironment hypothesis suggests itself. ...
Several studies have tested whether narcissism is a compensatory reaction to underlying ego fragility by examining narcissism's empirical links to both explicit self-esteem (ESE) and implicit self-esteem (ISE), under the general expectation that narcissists should exhibit an abundance of ESE but a dearth of ISE. However, not only have these studies yielded conflicting findings, they have also proceeded from divergent theoretical assumptions that shape the interpretation of their findings. Here, we draw out the implications of three prominent models of the interrelationships between narcissism, ESE, and ISE, before reassessing those interrelationships in a large multi-session study. Two (out of three) indices of ISE covaried negatively with narcissism, consistent with the view that ISE is a global marker for ego fragility. We contextualize our findings in terms of recent research and propose a new mechanism linking ISE to ego fragility.
... One possibility, of course, is a problematic developmental history, long theorized to underlie narcissism (Kernberg, 1975;Kohut, 1976), and for which some empirical evidence has recently emerged (e.g., Otway & Vignoles, 2006). However, non-family factors also merit consideration, especially given that genes and shared environment are known to be better predictors of the related constructs of self-esteem and self-esteem stability (Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006). In addition, an intriguing genes-byenvironment hypothesis suggests itself. ...
Several studies have found that explicit and implicit self-esteem interact to predict narcissism. These findings have been interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that narcissists have high but fragile self-esteem. However, we contend that these findings are neither empirically consistent nor conceptually coherent. We instead hypothesize that explicit and implicit self-esteem should predict narcissism independently, respectively in a positive and negative direction. In a large multi-session study, we examined the interrelationships between narcissism, explicit self-esteem, and three indices of implicit self-esteem (showing good psychometric properties and some convergent validity). No evidence emerged that explicit and implicit self-esteem interacted to predict narcissism. However, as predicted, two measures of implicit self-esteem were inversely related to narcissism. Potential explanations for divergent findings are considered.
In this research, the relationship between the self-esteem of academics and the political participation behaviors that they performed on the Twitter platform were discussed. In the study, relational screening model was used and the application was carried out on 503 academicians. The data were collected and analyzed with the Personal Information Form (PIF), Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and the Political Participation Scale on Twitter (PPST). The Political Participation Scale (PPTS) on Twitter was developed within the scope of this research. Pearson Correlation Coefficient was used to analyze the relationships between participants' RSES and PPTS cases. Differences in demographic factors and RSES / PPST cases were analyzed by ANOVA and Independent Samples T Tests. Descriptive statistics were evaluated by performing Frequency Analysis. According to the findings of the research, the self-esteem of academicians and their political participation status on Twitter, there is a negative correlation between "political expression", "participation in political discussions" and "participation in local government". On the other hand, it has been concluded that the participation of the academicians in political expression, their "participation in political discussions" and their "participation in the local government" have increased with the increase in their dreamer side. According to the findings, another dimension of the RSES, which positively correlates with the PPST, is the variable named "participation in discussions". In this context, it was determined that the participation level of political participation on Twitter increased positively as their score to participate in the discussions increased. It was found that the political participation activities of the academicians in Twitter platform were very low and that they were hesitant to express their opinions on political issues. However, it was found that their "self-esteem", "self-concept continuity" and "happiness in terms of depressive affect dimension" were quite high. In this context, the research findings support the thesis that self-esteem will increase with the increase in the education level in the literature and research findings contradict the opinion claiming that political participation will increase with the increase of the education level. The data obtained are important for the literature because the research model is a pioneer. Self-esteem and political participation behavior on the Twitter platform were put together for the first time in a research model. As a matter of fact, the relevant studies in the literature focus on the role of social media on political participation behavior, and the concept of self-esteem is not included in the process. For this reason, the research is a pioneer work for literature. On the other hand, it is assumed that the Political Participation Scale (TSKÖ) on Twitter which was developed within the scope of the study will shed light on further researchs.
Turkish
Bu araştırmada akademisyenlerin benlik saygıları ve Twitter platformunda gerçekleştirmiş oldukları siyasal katılım davranışları arasındaki ilişki ele alınmıştır. Araştırma, ilişkisel tarama modeli üzerine inşa edilerek 503 akademisyenin katılımıyla gerçekleştirilmiştir. Veriler kişisel bilgi formu ile birlikte Rosenberg'in Benlik Saygısı Ölçeği (RBSÖ) ve araştırma kapsamında inşa edilen Twitter'da Siyasal Katılım Ölçeği (TSKÖ) ile toplanarak analize tabi tutulmuştur. Bu kapsamda katılımcıların RBSÖ ve TSKÖ durumlarına yönelik ilişkileri Pearson Korelasyon Katsayısı hesaplanarak analiz edilirken, demografik faktörler ve RBSÖ/TSKÖ durumlarına yönelik farklılıklar ANOVA ve Independent Samples T Testleri ile analiz edilmiştir. Betimsel istatistikler ise Frekans Analizi gerçekleştirilerek değerlendirilmiştir. Araştırma sonunda ulaşılan bulgulara göre akademisyenlerin benlik saygıları ve Twitter'da gerçekleştirdikleri siyasal katılım durumları arasında; "siyasal ifade", "siyasal tartışmalara katılma" ve "yerel yönetime katılma" alt boyutları arasında negatif yönde anlamlı ilişki tespit edilmiştir. Öte yandan akademisyenlerin RBSÖ dâhilinde hayalperest olma durumlarının artması ile siyasal ifadede bulunmalarının, siyasal tartışmalara katılımlarının ve yerel yönetime katılımlarının arttığı sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Araştırma bulgularına göre TSKÖ ile pozitif yönde ilişki arz eden bir diğer RBSÖ alt boyutu ise "tartışmalara katılabilme" değişkenidir. Bu bağlamda katılımcıların tartışmalara katılabilme puanlarının artmasıyla Twitter'da siyasal katılım düzeylerinin pozitif yönde arttığı tespit edilmiştir. Akademisyenlerin genel anlamda Twitter platformunda gerçekleştirdikleri siyasal katılım faaliyetlerinin oldukça düşük olduğu, politik konularda görüş belirtmekten çekindiği saptanırken benlik saygılarının, kendilik kavramı sürekliliklerinin ve "depresif duygulanım açısından" mutlu olma durumlarının oldukça yüksek olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Bu bağlamda araştırma bulguları alanyazında yer alan eğitim faktörünün artmasıyla benlik saygısının artacağı tezi ile örtüşürken, eğitim faktörünün artması ile siyasal katılımın artacağı kanaati ile çelişmektedir. Elde edilen veriler benlik saygısı ve Twitter'da gerçekleştirilen siyasal katılım davranışının doğrudan ilişkilendirildiği bir modelde ele alınması hasebiyle literatür için önem taşımaktadır. Nitekim alan yazında yer alan ilgili çalışmalar, yalnızca sosyal medyanın siyasal katılım davranışı üzerindeki rolünü ele almaktadır, benlik saygısı kavramının sürece dâhil edilmediği görülmektedir. Bu bağlamda araştırma verileri alan yazına öncülük etmektedir. Öte yandan çalışma kapsamında geliştirilen Twitter'da Siyasal Katılım Ölçeği'nin (TSKÖ) sonraki araştırmalara ışık tutacağı varsayılmaktadır.
Firms organize tournaments on online crowdsourcing platforms to outsource complex business problems to external solvers. Participants on these platforms often self-organize into ad-hoc virtual teams to compete in such tournaments. Social dominance-based faultlines, which originate from the alignment of members based on IT-enabled social dominance attributes (e.g., rank and tier), have emerged as a novel type of faultline in crowdsourcing teams. Building on the Categorization-Elaboration Model (CEM), we investigate the contingent effects of team ability and team effort on the relationship between social dominance-based faultlines and team performance in crowdsourcing tournaments. We collected data of 265 virtual teams from Kaggle.com. We discovered that IT-enabled social dominance-based faultlines positively influence the performance of teams with low ability and high effort, whereas the effect becomes negative for teams with high ability and low effort. Our study yields theoretical implications by advancing a novel type of social dominance-based faultline and extending the CEM with two contingent factors (i.e., team effort and team ability) pertinent to team performance on crowdsourcing tournaments. We also offer practical guidelines for team formation in crowdsourcing tournaments and for the design of crowdsourcing platforms.
Background
There is a vast literature on the negative associations between spanking in childhood and various psychosocial developmental outcomes; yet, control for potential genetic confounds is rare.
Objectives
The current research aimed to provide probable ranges of estimates of the degree to which genetic and nonshared environmental covariation could explain the reported phenotypic effects in the Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor (Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor, Family Relations 65:490–501, 2016a, Gershoff and Grogan-Kaylor, Journal of Family Psychology 30:453, 2016b) meta-analysis of spanking.
Participants and setting.
The analytic sample for Study 1 was secured from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (CNLSY) and consisted of 2868 respondents (siblings and half-siblings). The data for Study 2 were secured from the published literature.
Methods
Study 1 analyzed the data from the CNLSY using univariate ACE models and bivariate Cholesky decomposition models. Study 2 used simulation modeling to provide a summative evaluation of the psychosocial effects of spanking with regard to genetic and nonshared environmental covariation.
Results
Study 1 replicated previous work showing that associations between spanking and outcomes of delinquency, depression, and alcohol use were explained by moderate-to-large degrees of genetic covariation and small-to-moderate degrees of nonshared environmental covariation. Simulation estimates from Study 2 suggest that genetic covariation accounts for a substantial amount of the phenotypic effect between spanking and psychosocial outcomes (≈60–80%), with the remainder attributable to nonshared environmental covariation (≈0–40%).
Conclusions
Results of the current research indicate that continued work on the effects of spanking is best served by behavior genetic research on a broader range of outcomes than what is currently available.
Why do some people blame the political system for the problems in their lives? We explore the origins of these grievances and how people assign responsibility and blame for the challenges they face. We propose that individual differences in the personality traits of locus of control and self-esteem help explain why some blame the political system for their personal problems. Using responses from a module of the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we show that those with low self-esteem and a weaker sense of control over their fates are more likely to blame the political system for the challenges they face in their lives. We also demonstrate that this assignment of blame is politically consequential, where those who intertwine the personal and the political are more likely to evaluate elected officials based on pocketbook economic conditions rather than sociotropic considerations.
A large body of work has investigated the associations between spanking and a wide range of psychosocial outcomes across development. A comparatively smaller subset of this literature, on a narrower range of psychosocial outcomes, has employed genetically-informative research designs capable of estimating the degree to which observed phenotypic effects are explained by genetic and environmental covariation. The current research analyzed data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (CNLSY; Study 1) and conducted simulation models using input parameters from the existing literature (Study 2) to provide a summative evaluation of the psychosocial effects of spanking with regard to genetic and nonshared environmental covariation. Results of Study 1 replicated previous work showing that associations between spanking and outcomes such as delinquency, depression, and alcohol use were explained by moderate-to-large degrees of genetic covariation, and small-to-moderate degrees of nonshared environmental covariation. Estimates from the simulations of Study 2 suggest that, generally, genetic covariation could account for a substantial amount of the observed phenotypic effect between spanking and the psychosocial outcome of interest (≈ 60%-80%), with the remainder likely attributable to nonshared environmental covariation (≈ 0%-40%). Collectively the results of the current research indicate that continued work on the developmental effects of spanking is best served by genetically-informative research designs on a broader range of outcomes than what is currently available.
Cel badań. Zarówno poziom samooceny jak i jej stabilność mają związek z wieloma obszarami ludzkiego życia. Przeprowadzone badanie miało na celu sprawdzić, czy stabilność samooceny jest związana z satysfakcją ze związku oraz z jego jakością, a także, czy na jakość związku wpływa poziom stabilności samooceny partnera. Metodologia. W badaniu wzięły udział 34 pary heteroseksualne. Wiek osób badanych: 18-28 lat (M=22,20; SD=2,33). Stabilność samooceny mierzono na przestrzeni siedmiu dni przy użyciu Skali Samooceny Rosenberga. W celu zmierzenia jakości związku skonstruowano kwestionariusz, w którym osoby badane oceniały częstość swoich zachowań w związku. Zmierzono także subiektywne poczucie jakości związku. Wyniki. Analizy regresji wykazały, że jakość związku mierzona obiektywnym wskaźnikiem była wyjaśniania przez model w 23% (R2=0,23; p<0,00135), przy czym istotny statystycznie okazał się jedynie wpływ samooceny osoby badanej (b*=0,32; p=0,006) oraz jakości związku u partnera (b*=0,35; p=0,005), natomiast subiektywne poczucie jakości związku było wyjaśniane przez model w 41% (R2=0,41; p<0,001), przy czym istotny statystycznie okazał się jedynie wpływ subiektywnego poczucia jakości związku u partnera (b*=0,68; p<0,001). Wnioski. W tekście proponujemy kilka wyjaśnień dotyczących uzyskanych wyników. Brak potwierdzenia hipotez może zostać wytłumaczony poprzez brak możliwości uogólnienia wyników związanych z samą samooceną na wyniki związane z jej stabilnością. Zależności między jakością związku mierzoną u obojga partnerów oraz satysfakcją ze związku partnerów są wyjaśniane intuicyjnie.
Samoocena pelni istotną role w kazdej dzialalności związanej z interakcją miedzyludzką. Szczegolnie wazna staje sie umiejetnośc samooceny w calej rodzinie zawodow pomocowych ( helping professions ), do ktorych mozna zaliczyc zarowno dzialania edukacyjne i pedagogiczne, jak i wszelkie dzialania pomocowe. Samoocena osoby edukującej lub pomagającej jest istotnym punktem wyjścia do budowania relacji dydaktycznej lub pomocowej. Kluczowe dla samooceny jest poznanie i zaakceptowanie wlasnej osobowości, czyli struktury „Ja”, badanych zarowno przez psychologie i nauki pedagogiczne, jak rowniez przez inne nauki szczegolowe. Wątpliwości związane z jednoznaczną definicją struktury Ja trwają od bardzo dlugiego czasu. Badacze, w zalezności od nurtu psychologicznego, tworzą rozne charakterystyki Ja. Dociekania teoretyczne dotyczącą zarowno procesu tworzenia sie struktury Ja, jak i szczegolowych funkcji, ktore owa struktura pelni. W niniejszym artykule autorzy podejmują probe odpowiedzi na kluczowe zagadnienia teoretyczne związane z pojeciem samooceny, traktując ją jako ewaluatywny komponent struktury „Ja”. Tekst stanowi swoisty przegląd teorii i badan naukowych poczynionych na gruncie polskim i zagranicznym. Zebrane materialy dotyczą takich wskaźnikow, jak chocby: zagadnienia teoretyczne związane z pojeciem „Ja” oraz samooceną – jej poziomem, jasnością i stalością, szczegolnie w kontekście budowania relacji pomocowej. Te wszystkie elementy wplywają na jednostke, determinując jej funkcjonowanie na plaszczyźnie intra- i interpersonalnej.
This chapter contains a plea for rediscovery of the individual in research on global self-esteem. This construct, being central in many domains of human development, has many facets which deserve closer inspection. Examples are individually different self-esteem trajectories, the changing meaning of self-esteem across the individual life-span and across cohorts, as well as the situation-dependency and short-term variability of self-esteem. With this in mind, the chapter addresses the question of whether the concept of normative self-esteem development across the life-span embraces this complexity. Using an empirical example for self-esteem development in adolescence, it is demonstrated that the immense intraindividual and interindividual variability of self-esteem clearly dwarfs normative aspects of this construct.
An injury to the brain can affect virtually any aspect of functioning and, at the deepest level, can alter sense of self or the essential qualities that define who we are. In recent years, there has been a growing body of research investigating changes to self in the context of brain injury. Developments in the cognitive and social neurosciences, psychotherapy and neurorehabilitation have together provided a rich perspective on self and identity reformation after brain injury. This book draws upon these theoretical perspectives and research findings to provide a comprehensive account of the impact of brain injury on self-identity.
This chapter highlights the contributions that have been made by personality and social psychology, respectively and together, to the science of well-being. Since its humble beginning in the 1930s, the science of well-being has grown to become one of the most vibrant research topics in psychological science today. The personality tradition of well-being research has shown that it is possible to measure well-being reliably, that self-reported well-being predicts important life outcomes, and that well-being has nontrivial genetic origins. The social psychology tradition has illuminated that there are various cultural meanings of "well-being," that responses to well-being questions involve multiple cognitive processes, that happiness is experienced often in relationship contexts, and that it is possible to improve one's well-being. Finally, there are recent methodological integrations of the personality and social psychology perspectives that delineate person-situation interactions and gene-environment interactions.
The purpose of this research was to determine the level of study competences among students of physical education. The study encompassed first-year students aged 18 to 26, who began their studies in 2010, 2011 and 2012. The Standard Progressive Matrices Plus, the Social Competence Questionnaire, the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire, the Coping Orientation of Problem Experience Inventory, NEO Five-Factor Inventory, and the Multidimensional Self-Esteem Inventory were used. Students were characterised by a high level of study competence with regard to skills and personality. The study group was moderately homogeneous: the students starting their studies in consecutive three years did not significantly differ with respect to the analysed skills. This undermines the circulating opinions of lowering the level of competence of students in the recent years.
Increasing levels of financial inequality prompt questions about the relationship between income and well-being. Using a twins sample from the Survey of Midlife Development in the United States and controlling for personality as core self-evaluations, we found that men, but not women, had higher subjective financial well-being when they had higher incomes. This relationship was due to ‘unshared environmental’ factors rather than genes, suggesting that the effect of income on subjective financial well-being is driven by unique experiences among men. Further, for women and men, we found that core self-evaluations influenced income and subjective financial well-being, and that both genetic and environmental factors explained this relationship. Given the relatively small and male-specific relationship between income and subjective financial well-being, and the determination of both income and subjective financial well-being by personality, we propose that policy makers focus on malleable factors beyond merely income in order to increase subjective financial well-being, including financial education and building self-regulatory capacity.
Die Narzisstische Persönlichkeitsstörung (NPS) wird aufgrund der inkonsistenten Konzeptualisierung stark diskutiert. Ziel der Studie war es, NPS-Patienten zu untersuchen, um mit empirischen Daten die Validität und klinische Relevanz der NPS zu diskutieren. Es wurden zwei epidemiologische Studien durchgeführt. Studie 1 betrachtet die allgemeine psychische Belastung und Komorbidiätsraten, Studie 5 schaut auf die Stabilität und Remissionsrate der Diagnose und der diagnostischen Kriterien. Studie 1 fand eine erhöhte allgemeine psychische Belastung und hohe Komorbiditätsraten für affektive Störungen und Störungen durch Substanzkonsum, Studie 5 fand eine moderate Remissionsrate von 53%. In Studie 2 und 3 wurden selbstbezogene Kognitionen und Emotionen untersucht. Studie 2 erforschte die explizite und implizite Selbstwertschätzung. Es zeigte sich, dass die NPS mit einem niedrigen expliziten aber einem unbeeinträchtigten impliziten Selbstwert einhergeht. Studie 3 betrachtete Schamneigung bei der NPS. NPS-Patienten zeigten eine höhere explizite und implizite Schamneigung. Das indiziert, dass die narzisstische Vulnerabilität (niedriger expliziter Selbstwert, hohe explizite und implizite Schamneigung) bei NPS-Patienten eine Rolle spielt. In Studie 4 wurde die kognitive und emotionale Empathie untersucht. NPS-Patienten zeigten eine niedrigere emotionale Empathie aber eine unbeeinträchtigte kognitive Empathie. Die Ergebnisse passen zur aktuellen Kritik, dass die diagnostischen Kriterien zu eng sind, um die NPS adäquat zu beschreiben. Studien 1–3 geben Hinweise für die narzisstische Vulnerabilität, die nicht in den diagnostischen Kriterien repräsentiert wird, Studie 4 bringt Hinweise für eine ungestörte kognitive Empathie, was konträr zum diagnostischen Kriterium „Empathiemangel“ ist, und Studie 5 stellt die Beschreibung der NPS als stabiles andauerndes Muster in Frage. Implikationen für weitere Forschung und für die klinische Praxis werden diskutiert.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediation effects of children's cognitive and noncognitive traits on the relationship between dropout mothers' traits and their children's educational expectations and to examine the interaction effects of dropout mothers' General Education Development (GED) on children's traits and educational expectations. The data were drawn from a series of National Longitudinal Survey Data. This study demonstrated the effect of mothers' self-esteem on children's educational expectations, which were mediated through children's cognitive ability and self-esteem after controlling for the mothers' cognitive ability, self-esteem, and socioeconomic status. Furthermore, mothers' GED attainment moderated the relationship between children's self-esteem and educational expectations. These findings provide better understanding of the intergenerational connections between cognitive and noncognitive traits and educational expectations.
It is known that MIMO detectors performance is highly influenced by the channel matrix condition number. An efficient way to decrease the channel matrix condition number is the use of Lattice Reduction techniques. In this paper a Lattice-Reduction-Aided (LRA) K-Best detector based on the channel matrix condition number is proposed for improving the performance of conventional K-Best algorithm. This approach leads to a preprocessing complexity reduction of the LRA K-Best detector with marginal loss in the performance. The performance of the proposed detector based on condition number depending on the chosen LR method (LLL or Seysen's) is also evaluated.
Objective:
Who has high self-esteem? Is it ambitious, competitive, outgoing people-agentic personalities? Or is it caring, honest, understanding people-communal personalities? The literature on agency-communion and self-esteem is sparse, indirect, and inconsistent. Based on William James's theorizing, we propose the "self-centrality breeds self-enhancement" principle. Accordingly, agency will be linked to self-esteem, if agency is self-central. Conversely, communion will be linked to self-esteem, if communion is self-central. But what determines the self-centrality of agency and communion? The literature suggests that agency is self-central in agentic cultures, as well as among nonreligious individuals, men, and younger adults. Communion is self-central in communal cultures, as well as among religious individuals, women, and older adults.
Method:
This study examined 187,957 people (47% female; mean age = 37.49 years, SD = 12.22) from 11 cultures. The large sample size afforded us the opportunity to test simultaneously the effect of all four moderators in a single two-level model (participants nested in cultures).
Results:
Results supported the unique moderating effect of culture, religiosity, age, and sex on the relation between agency-communion and self-esteem.
Conclusions:
Agentic and communal people can both have high self-esteem, depending on self-centrality of agency and communion.
Over the last several years, researchers have begun to appreciate the ways in which
questions of interest to personality and social psychologists can be addressed with
neuropyschological case material (e.g., Klein & Kihlstrom, 1998; Klein, Loftus, &
Kihlstrom, 1996; Macrae, Bodenhausen, Schloerscheidt, & Milne, 1998). In this
paper we show how a neuropsychological approach can contribute to our understanding
of the mental representation of self.Wefirst review some of the limitations
of studies of self that rely on findings from normal participants, and show how these
can be overcome by examining the performance of patients with
neuropsychological impairments. We then present the case of patient D.B., who
suffered profound amnesia as a result of anoxia following cardiac arrest, as an example
of the way in which the study of neuropsychological syndromes can cast important
new light on questions concerning the mental representation of self.
Three different measures of the Big Five personality dimensions were developed from the battery of questionnaires used in the National Merit Twin Study: one from trait self-rating scales, one from personality inventory items, and one from an adjective check list. Behavior-genetic models were fit to what the three measures had in common, and to the variance distinctive to each. The results of the model fitting agreed with other recent studies in showing the Big Five dimensions to be substantially and about equally heritable, with little or no contribution of shared family environment. Heritabilities for males and females did not differ significantly. For Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, some effect of shared environment was found for measure-specific variance on the personality inventory, and for Extraversion and Neuroticism, models involving nonadditive genetic variance or twin contrast effects provided slightly better fits.
The authors examined the extent to which self-esteem (SE) stability relates to self-regulatory styles, self-concept clarity (SCC), and goal-related affect. The results supported the notion that individuals with unstable SE are not likely to possess a strong sense of self. Specifically, unstable as compared to stable SE was associated with (a) self-regulatory styles reflecting lower levels of self-determination, (b) lower SCC, and (c) goal-related affect characterized by greater tenseness and less interest. Theoretical implications are discussed.
Self-esteem has been linked to a diverse array of positive and negative affective states. The present research explored the nature of these relationships. Study 1 found that self-esteem (as measured by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale) is more closely associated with self-relevant emotional states than with emotional states that do not directly implicate the self. Study 2 replicated these findings and found that although several personality variables predicted participant’s emotional reactions to success and failure, these effects were eliminated once self-esteem was taken into account. Study 3 found that self-esteem predicted participant’s self-relevant emotional reactions to failure but not their non-self-relevant emotional reactions. These findings provide converging evidence that self-esteem is most closely linked to a particular class of emotions that pertain to how people feel about themselves.
The authors examined whether stability and level of self-esteem interact with daily hassles in predicting severity of depressive symptoms. As predicted, Time 2 depression scores (with Time 1 scores controlled) were highest among individuals with unstable self-esteem who reported considerable daily hassles. By contrast, self-esteem level did not interact with daily hassles to predict Time 2 depressive symptoms. These findings held even after negative self-concept items were eliminated from the depressive symptom inventories. Additional analyses revealed that self-esteem stability accounted for variance independent of the tendency to over generalize following failure or negative event attributional style. These findings support the contention that unstable self-esteem reflects fragile feelings of self-worth that exacerbate depressive symptoms under certain circumstances.
A meta-analytic review finds that college students' self-esteem increased substantially between 1968 and 1994 when measured using the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE). Children's scores on the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI) show a curvilinear pattern over time, decreasing from 1965 to 1979 and increasing from 1980 to 1993. Children's SEI scores are directly correlated with social statistics (e.g., divorce rate, unemployment) for the corresponding years. Analyses for age differences find that SEI scores decrease slightly during the transition from elementary school to junior high and then rise progressively through high school and college. RSE scores increase steadily with age. Results are discussed in terms of the antecedents of self-esteem, including social acceptance, competencies, and the culture of self-worth.
Reports an error in the original article by Jennifer D. Campbell et al (
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1996[Jan], Vol 70[1], 141–156). On page 145, item 10 in Table 1 contains a typographical error. The item should read: "Even if I wanted to, I don't think I could tell someone what I'm really like." (The following abstract of this article originally appeared as record
1996-01707-011).
Self-concept clarity (SCC) references a structural aspect of the self-concept: the extent to which self-beliefs are clearly and confidently defined, internally consistent, and stable. This article reports the SCC Scale and examines (a) its correlations with self-esteem (SE), the Big Five dimensions, and self-focused attention (Study 1); (b) its criterion validity (Study 2); and (c) its cultural boundaries (Study 3). Low SCC was independently associated with high Neuroticism, low SE, low Conscientiousness, low Agreeableness, chronic self-analysis, low internal state awareness, and a ruminative form of self-focused attention. The SCC Scale predicted unique variance in 2 external criteria: the stability and consistency of self-descriptions. Consistent with theory on Eastern and Western self-construals, Japanese participants exhibited lower levels of SCC and lower correlations… (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Research on self-esteem has focused almost exclusively on level of trait self-esteem to the neglect of other potentially more important aspects such as the contingencies on which self-esteem is based. Over a century ago, W. James (1890) argued that self-esteem rises and falls around its typical level in response to successes and failures in domains on which one has staked self-worth. We present a model of global self-esteem that builds on James' insights and emphasizes contingencies of self-worth. This model can help to (a) point the way to understanding how self-esteem is implicated in affect, cognition, and self-regulation of behavior, (b) suggest how and when self-esteem is implicated in social problems; (c) resolve debates about the nature and functioning of self-esteem; (d) resolve paradoxes in related literatures, such as why people who are stigmatized do not necessarily have low self-esteem and why self-esteem does not decline with age; and (e) suggest how self-esteem is causally related to depression. In addition, this perspective raises questions about how contingencies of self-worth are acquired and how they change, whether they are primarily a resource or a vulnerability, and whether some people have noncontingent self-esteem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract)
This chapter describes self-esteem and provides an overview of existing perspectives on self-esteem. Self-esteem is a sociometer, essentially an internal monitor of the degree to which one is valued or devalued as a relational partner. The chapter evaluates a series of specific, testable hypotheses about self-esteem and examines laboratory and other findings in relevance to the sociometer theory and its specific hypotheses. This sociometer theory also reinterprets several interpersonal phenomena that have been explained previously in terms of the self-esteem motive. In specific, self-esteem refers to a person's appraisal of his or her value. Global self-esteem denotes a global value judgment about the self, whereas domain-specific self-esteem involves appraisals of one's value in a particular area. Self-esteem is an affectively laden self-evaluation. Self-evaluations are in turn assessments of one's behavior or attributes along evaluative dimensions. Some self-evaluations are dispassionate. whereas others are affectively laden. Self-esteem focuses primarily on individual differences in dispositional or trait self-esteem.
An interactive model of perfectionism, perceived weight status, and self-esteem was tested on 342 female undergraduates to predict bulimic symptoms. Using a longitudinal design, the authors tested the model on data collected at 2 points: the spring of participants' senior year of high school and during participants' first year of college. The authors hypothesized and found that self-esteem moderates the interaction between perfectionism and perceived weight status in predicting bulimic symptoms. Women who are high in perfectionism and who consider themselves overweight exhibit bulimic symptoms only if they have low self-esteem (i.e., if they doubt they can attain their high body standards). High self-esteem women with the same diathesis-stress conditions are less likely to exhibit bulimic symptoms. These findings clarify the role of perfectionism in bulimic symptomatology.
Three studies were conducted to assess the proposition that self-esteem serves an anxiety-buffering function. In Study 1, it was hypothesized that raising self-esteem would reduce anxiety in response to vivid images of death. In support of this hypothesis, Ss who received positive personality feedback reported less anxiety in response to a video about death than did neutral feedback Ss. In Studies 2 and 3, it was hypothesized that increasing self-esteem would reduce anxiety among individuals anticipating painful shock. Consistent with this hypothesis, both success and positive personality feedback reduced Ss' physiological arousal in response to subsequent threat of shock. Thus, converging evidence of an anxiety-buffering function of self-esteem was obtained.
Previous studies on self-esteem have focused exclusively on its psychosocial determinants. The goal of the present study is to clarify genetic v. environmental determinants of self-esteem.
Participants were Caucasian women sampled from the Virginia Twin Register: 363 pairs of MZ and 238 pairs of DZ twins were available from the first wave of the study, and 430 pairs of MZ and 308 pairs of DZ twins from the second. Self-esteem was assessed with the Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale.
Using univariate twin analyses of self-esteem and a repeated measurement twin model, we found that self-esteem is a moderately heritable trait (heritability = 52% in the repeated measurement model); environmental influences are also very important, and are probably mostly not shared by members of a twin pair.
Aetiological models of self-esteem which examine only psychosocial factors are incomplete; genetic factors need to be integrated.
Preface. List of Figures. List of Tables. 1. The Scope of Genetic Analyses. 2. Data Summary. 3. Biometrical Genetics. 4. Matrix Algebra. 5. Path Analysis and Structural Equations. 6. LISREL Models and Methods. 7. Model Fitting Functions and Optimization. 8. Univariate Analysis. 9. Power and Sample Size. 10. Social Interaction. 11. Sex Limitation and GE Interaction. 12. Multivariate Analysis. 13. Direction of Causation. 14. Repeated Measures. 15. Longitudinal Mean Trends. 16. Observer Ratings. 17. Assortment and Cultural Transmission. 18. Future Directions. Appendices: A. List of Participants. B. The Greek Alphabet. C. LISREL Scripts for Univariate Models. D. LISREL Script for Power Calculation. E. LISREL Scripts for Multivariate Models. F. LISREL Script for Sibling Interaction Model. G. LISREL Scripts for Sex and GE Interaction. H. LISREL Script for Rater Bias Model. I. LISREL Scripts for Direction of Causation. J. LISREL Script and Data for Simplex Model. K. LISREL Scripts for Assortment Models. Bibliography. Index.
This article examines the association between evaluative and knowledge components of the self. Four studies tested the hypothesis that the self-concepts of low-self-esteem (LSE) people are characterized by less clarity or certainty than those of high-self-esteem (HSE) people. LSE Ss exhibited less extremity and self-reported confidence when rating themselves on bipolar trait adjectives (Study 1), less temporal stability in their trait ratings over a 2-month interval (Study 2), less congruence between their self-concepts and their subsequent perceptions of situation-specific behavior and memory for prior behavior (Study 3), and less internal consistency, lower self-rated confidence, and longer reaction times when making me/not me responses to pairs of opposite traits (Study 4). Alternative accounts of the results and the implications of self-concept clarity for understanding the pervasive impact of self-esteem on behavior are discussed.
Attempts to predict depression from a strictly cognitive perspective have met with limited success. A goal-orientation model is proposed that integrates motivational and cognitive factors in attempting to explain and predict depression. The model proposes that people differ in their goal orientation, with some people being more validation seeking (VS) and others being more growth seeking (GS). The model predicts that compared with GS persons, VS persons will show greater anxiety in anticipation of a stressful event and greater self-esteem loss, task disengagement, and depression after a negative event. A goal-orientation measure was developed (Study 1), and the predictive validity of the model was tested (Studies 2-5). Findings suggest that the explanatory and predictive power of the cognitive theories can be enhanced, and the arsenal of the cognitive therapist enlarged, by integrating motivational and cognitive approaches to depression.
John Vasconcellos, Foreword Andrew Mecca, Preface Neil J. Smelser, Self-Esteem and Society Bonnie Bhatti, David Derezotes, Seung Ock Kim, and Harry Specht, The Association between Child Maltreatment and Self-Esteem Martin V. Covington, Self-Esteem and School Failure: Analysis and Policy Implications Susan Crockenberg and Barbara Soby, Self-Esteem and Adolescent Pregnancy Thomas J. Scheff, Suzanne M. Retzinger, and Michael Ryan, Crime, Violence, and Self-Esteem Leonard Schneiderman, Self-Esteem and Chronic Welfare Dependency Rodney Skager and Elizabeth Kerst, Psychological Research and Theory on the Relationship between Self-Esteem and Alcohol and Other Drug Use Harry Kitano, Alcohol, Drug Use, and Self-Esteem: A Sociocultural Perspective
Behavioral Genetics The Role of Molecular Genetics in a Post Genomics World Recent Developments in Quantitative Trait Loci Analysis Practical Barriers to Identifying Complex Trait Loci Assessing Genotype X Environment Interactions and Correlations in a Postgenomic World UK Population Biomedical Collections Genetic Studies of Learning and Memory in Mouse Models An Integrative Neuroscience Program Linking Genes to Cognition and Disease Genetic Contributions to Anatomical, Behavioural and Neurophysiological Indices of Cognition Genetic Covariance Between Processing Speed and IQ General Cognitive Ability Isolation of the Genetic Factors Underlying Speech and Language Disorders Genetic Etiology of Comorbid Reading Difficulties and ADHD Epistasis and the Genetics of Complex Traits The Genetics of Autistic Disorder Finding Genes for Complex Behaviors: Progress in Mouse Models of the Addictions Genetic and Genotype X Environment Interaction Effects on Risk of Dependence on Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs: New Research Challenges Pharmacogenetics in a Postgenomic World Personality Neuroticism and Serotonin: A Developmental Genetic Perspective Animal Models of Anxiety Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: New Genetic Findings, New Directions Schizophrenia The Genetics of Affective Disorders: Current and Future Dementia Behavioral Genomics
The authors examined the extent to which level and stability of fifth-grade children's self-esteem predicted intrinsic motivation and related achievement behaviors, and reasons for anger. The findings indicated that the more unstable the children's self-esteem, the lower their scores on measures of curiosity/interest and preference for challenge. In addition, the lower the children's self-esteem, the lower their preference for challenge. Additional analyses indicated that (a) self-evaluations of scholastic competence mediated the effects of both stability and level of self-esteem and (b) day-to-day variability in self-evaluations of scholastic competence was so intertwined with stability of self-esteem that neither uniquely predicted either curiosity/interest or preference for challenge. Finally, the more unstable the children's self-esteem, the greater the likelihood that they reported that they would become angry because of the self-esteem-threatening aspects of aversive interpersonal events. Theoretical implications are discussed.
Happiness is associated with both extraversion and neuroticism, and extraversion is generally considered the more important. A recent study of happy introverts has shown that extraversion is not always an essential correlate of happiness, and an extensive meta-analysis has found that neuroticism is a greater predictor of both happiness and life satisfaction. It is suggested that the reason for the importance of neuroticism having been overlooked in the past, is the difficulty of handling the idea that (positive) happiness is related to the absence of a (negative) construct. This difficulty could be resolved by the reversal of neuroticism into an alternative and positive concept of “emotional stability”. Happiness could then be regarded as being associated with two positive qualities. With this change of emphasis, a short empirical study has been made of the relationships between happiness as measured by the Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI) and extraversion and emotional stability. In bivariate and partial correlation, emotional stability was more strongly associated with happiness than extraversion, and accounted for more of the total variability in multiple regression. Emotional stability was also the greater correlate for a majority of the 29 items of the OHI, and the sole significant predictor of the happiness of younger people.
—Null hypothesis testing of correlational predictions from weak substantive theories in soft psychology is subject to the influence of ten obfuscating factors whose effects are usually (1) sizeable, (2) opposed, (3) variable, and (4) unknown The net epistemic effect of these ten obfuscating influences is that the usual research literature review is well nigh uninterpretable Major changes in graduate education, conduct of research, and editorial policy are proposed Recently, I read an article in the Psychological Bulletin summarizing the research literature on a theory in personology. I had some interest in it both for its intrinsic importance and because the theorist is an old friend and former academic colleague. The reviewer seemed scrupulously fair in dealing with the evidence and arguments, and I do not believe any reader could discern even faint evidence of bias pro or con. The empirical evidence on this theory has now accumulated to a considerable mass of factual reports and associated theoretical inferences, so we are not dealing with a recently advanced conjecture on which the evidence is sparse in amount or confined to too narrow a fact domain. Despite this large mass of data and the scholarly attributes of the reviewer, upon completing the reading I found myself puzzled as to what a rational mind ought to conclude about the state of the evidence. Given all these facts and arguments based upon them, pulled together by a reviewer of competence and objectivity, am I prepared to say that my friend X's theory has been refuted, or strongly corroborated, or is in some vague epistemic region in between? If, taken as it stands, the theory seems to have been refuted, is it nevertheless doing well enough considering the whole fact domain and the plausible explanations of some seeming predictive failures, that we should continue to investigate it and try to patch it up (i.e., does it seem to have enough verisimilitude to warrant occupying psychologists with amending it so its verisimilitude may increase)? Or, is the state of the evidence such a mess conceptually and interpretatively that perhaps the thing to do is to give it up as a bad job and start working on something else?
we believe that the common thread between early personality development and later adult personality lies in individual differences in emotionality / propose that personality development in the first 8 yrs of life occurs in 5 basic steps in which the child progresses (1) from organized patterns of behaviors, (2) to a rudimentary nonverbal conception of emotional states, (3) to a rudimentary verbal conception of emotional states, (4) to a verbal conception of dispositions, and finally, (5) to a full metatheory of self / we conceive of the 1st step as a precursor to personality and the latter 4 steps as personality development per se
given the emergent self-concept's importance to personality and its relative neglect by previous researchers, we focus on dispositional conceptions of self / specifically, we emphasize the child's early phenomenological experience, the ages in which important aspects of the self-concept develop, and those mechanisms that are involved in its development (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The influence of shared environmental factors on adolescent adjustment was investigated in a sample of 667 adoptive families. Correlations between parental ratings of family functioning and adolescent ratings of adjustment were generally higher for birth offspring than for adoptive offspring, suggesting passive genotype-environment processes. For all except one of the indicators of adolescent adjustment, the nonbiological sibling correlation was low, suggesting that approximately 10% or less of the variance in these measures is attributable to shared environmental effects. However, for a quantitative measure of alcohol and tobacco use, the nonbiologically related sibling correlation was moderate (
r = 26 ) but most consistent with sibling rather than parent effects. These findings provide further evidence of the minimal effect of common rearing on sibling psychological similarity, at least within the broadly constituted U.S. middle class. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Self-concept clarity (SCC) references a structural aspect of the self-concept: the extent to which self-beliefs are clearly and confidently defined, internally consistent, and stable. This article reports the SCC Scale and examines (a) its correlations with self-esteem (SE), the Big Five dimensions, and self-focused attention (Study 1); (b) its criterion validity (Study 2); and (c) its cultural boundaries (Study 3). Low SCC was independently associated with high Neuroticism, low SE, low Conscientiousness, low Agreeableness, chronic self-analysis, low internal state awareness, and a ruminative form of self-focused attention. The SCC Scale predicted unique variance in 2 external criteria: the stability and consistency of self-descriptions. Consistent with theory on Eastern and Western self-construals, Japanese participants exhibited lower levels of SCC and lower correlations between SCC and SE than did Canadian participants. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Three studies were conducted to determine whether physical attractiveness (PAT) is related to subjective well-being (SWB). In the first study (
N = 221), unselected students were photographed and videotaped. In the second study (
N = 131), participants were selected on the basis of extremes in PAT, and in the third study (
N = 155), participants were preselected for extreme scores on SWB. Correlations between SWB and PAT varied from .03 to .33. In Study 1 the mean correlation between PAT and SWB was .13. When appearance enhancers (hair, clothing, and jewelry) were covered or removed in Studies 2 and 3, the correlation between PAT and SWB dropped, suggesting that part of the SWB–PAT relation might be due to happier people doing more to enhance their beauty. The impact of PAT on SWB may be mitigated by the fact that others agree on a target's PAT at only modest levels. It was found that self-perceptions of PAT were correlated with both one's objective PAT and one's SWB. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Four studies (total n= 469) examined correlates of loneliness in order to explore explanations for the persistence of loneliness among college students. Self-report and attitude scales, ratings of others following dyadic interactions, and self and other ratings at two points during an extended period of group interactions indicated that lonely students (a) rated themselves more negatively and reported deficits in social skills and self-concept, (b) rated specific others and people-in-general more negatively and were more alienated and externalized, (c) expected others to rate them negatively, but (d) in general were not differentially rated by others except in the initial phase of group interactions and by lonely others following dyadic interactions. Results suggested that loneliness may be perpetuated by its cognitive and affective concomitants, with some evidence for gender differences, whereas inconclusive evidence was found regarding responses of others to the lonely person.
We discuss the construct of doubt about one’s competence and suggest that doubt can have myriad consequences (e.g., self-handicapping, defensive pessimism). We focus on the effect of self-doubt when it is combined with a concern with performance and assert that this combination leads to the phenomenon of subjective overachievement. In two studies, we present a new 17-item Subjective Overachievement Scale (SOS), which includes two independent subscales measuring individual differences in self-doubt and concern with performance. The first study, consisting of two large samples (Ns = 2,311 and 1,703), provides evidence that the scale has high internal consistency and a clear two-factor structure. Additionally, the subscales have adequate test-retest reliability (Ns = 67 and 115). A second study reveals that the SOS has good convergent and discriminant validity. Both subscales are unrelated to social desirability but exhibit the predicted patterns of associations with other related constructs. The Concern with Performance Subscale is correlated with achievement motivation, whereas the Self-Doubt Subscale is correlated with scales assessing negative affectivity (e.g., self-esteem, social anxiety) and other self-related strategies associated with concerns about one’s competence (e.g., self-handicapping, defensive pessimism, impostor phenomenon). The SOS, which combines the two subscales, appears to tap a unique strategy that individuals may use to deal with doubts about their own competence.
This article examines the adequacy of the “rules of thumb” conventional cutoff criteria and several new alternatives for various fit indexes used to evaluate model fit in practice. Using a 2‐index presentation strategy, which includes using the maximum likelihood (ML)‐based standardized root mean squared residual (SRMR) and supplementing it with either Tucker‐Lewis Index (TLI), Bollen's (1989) Fit Index (BL89), Relative Noncentrality Index (RNI), Comparative Fit Index (CFI), Gamma Hat, McDonald's Centrality Index (Mc), or root mean squared error of approximation (RMSEA), various combinations of cutoff values from selected ranges of cutoff criteria for the ML‐based SRMR and a given supplemental fit index were used to calculate rejection rates for various types of true‐population and misspecified models; that is, models with misspecified factor covariance(s) and models with misspecified factor loading(s). The results suggest that, for the ML method, a cutoff value close to .95 for TLI, BL89, CFI, RNI, and Gamma Hat; a cutoff value close to .90 for Mc; a cutoff value close to .08 for SRMR; and a cutoff value close to .06 for RMSEA are needed before we can conclude that there is a relatively good fit between the hypothesized model and the observed data. Furthermore, the 2‐index presentation strategy is required to reject reasonable proportions of various types of true‐population and misspecified models. Finally, using the proposed cutoff criteria, the ML‐based TLI, Mc, and RMSEA tend to overreject true‐population models at small sample size and thus are less preferable when sample size is small.
This chapter demonstrates the ways in which consideration of both level and stability of self-esteem can provide a vehicle for reconciling these differing views. The chapter provides a framework and review evidence that suggests that a full understanding of self-esteem processes requires a consideration of both self-esteem components. It discusses the meaning of stability of self-esteem and the way it can be—and has been—measured and examines the reason for people varying in the extent to which their self-esteem is unstable, focusing on both contemporaneous and early childhood influences. A preliminary model of the way stability and level of self-esteem jointly relate to the use of self-protection and self-enhancement strategy is presented. The chapter describes important differences that emerge between and within high and low self-esteem individuals (SEs) as a function of stability of self-esteem. The different views of low and high self-esteem and the relevance of self-esteem instability for reconciling them have been discussed.
In order to test Maccoby and Martin's revision of Baumrind's conceptual framework, the families of approximately 4,100 14-18-year-olds were classified into 1 of 4 groups (authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, or neglectful) on the basis of the adolescents' ratings of their parents on 2 dimensions: acceptance/involvement and strictness/supervision. The youngsters were then contrasted along 4 sets of outcomes: psychosocial development, school achievement, internalized distress, and problem behavior. Results indicate that adolescents who characterize their parents as authoritative score highest on measures of psychosocial competence and lowest on measures of psychological and behavioral dysfunction; the reverse is true for adolescents who describe their parents as neglectful. Adolescents whose parents are characterized as authoritarian score reasonably well on measures indexing obedience and conformity to the standards of adults but have relatively poorer self-conceptions than other youngsters. In contrast, adolescents from indulgent homes evidence a strong sense of self-confidence but report a higher frequency of substance abuse and school misconduct and are less engaged in school. The results provide support for Maccoby and Martin's framework and indicate the need to distinguish between two types of “permissive” families: those that are indulgent and those that are neglectful.
Past research has found the performance of persons with high self-esteem to improve after failure, especially on tasks for which persistence correlates positively with performance. However, persistence may be nonproductive in some situations. Experiment 1 used a task for which persistence and performance were uncorrelated; subjects high in self-esteem persisted longer but performed worse than did those with low self-esteem, particularly after prior failure feedback. Experiment 2 tested whether differential sensitivity to advice about the efficacy of persistence mediates nonproductive persistence. High self-esteem subjects who received explicit advice against nonproductive persistence on a puzzle-solving task still tended to persist longer on unsolvable puzzles than did low self-esteem subjects. The implications of high self-esteem subjects' tendency to engage in nonproductive persistence are discussed.
ABSTRACT The genetic and environmental etiology of the five-factor model of personality as measured by the revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) was assessed using 123 pairs of identical twins and 127 pairs of fraternal twins. Broad genetic influence on the five dimensions of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness was estimated at 41%, 53%, 61%, 41%, and 44%, respectively. The facet scales also showed substantial heritability, although for several facets the genetic influence was largely nonadditive. The influence of the environment was consistent across all dimensions and facets. Shared environmental influences accounted for a negligible proportion of the variance in most scales, whereas nonshared environmental influences accounted for the majority of the environmental variance in all scales.
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.
In a recent study, Kernis, Grannemann and Mathis (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 80–84) reported that stability of self-esteem (SE) moderates the relation between level of SE and depression. Specifically, level of SE predicted depression more strongly in persons with temporally stable SE. We attempted to replicate this finding across three independent data sets (total N = 504). Although level of SE was a strong prospective predictor of depressive symptoms in all three studies, in none were significant interactions obtained between level and stability of SE in the form suggested by Kernis and his colleagues. Overall, our results suggest that Kernis et al.'s finding is unreliable. Given recent theory suggesting that instability in SE (Roberts & Monroe, Clinical Psychology Review, 14, 161–181, 1994) and neuroticism (Martin, Personality and Individual Differences, 6, 353–365, 1985) predispose to depression subsequent to life Stressors, these findings are not surprising. Data are presented that demonstrate that stable SE and affect measured ‘on-line’ through daily assessments are, in fact, associated with lower levels of neuroticism.
We propose that self-uncertainty moderates responsiveness to perceived variations (e.g., breaches or provisions) in procedural justice. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that high (compared to low) self-uncertainty individuals are more responsive to variations in procedural justice, because they use procedural information to infer their organizational acceptance, respect, or social standing. In six experiments, high (compared to low) self-uncertainty individuals responded with affective, cognitive, and behavioral intensity to perceived variations in procedural justice. In particular, they felt worse, judged the procedure as unfair, and were unwilling to cooperate when they were deprived (as opposed to granted) voice. However, this pattern was cancelled out when these individuals engaged in a self-affirming activity. The findings establish the self in general, and self-uncertainty in particular, as a crucial moderator of responses to procedural information.