DOES HIGH SELF-ESTEEM CAUSE BETTER PERFORMANCE

PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST

DOES HIGH SELF-ESTEEM CAUSE BETTER
PERFORMANCE, INTERPERSONAL SUCCESS,
HAPPINESS, OR HEALTHIER LIFESTYLES?
Roy F. Baumeister,1 Jennifer D. Campbell,2 Joachim I. Krueger,3 and Kathleen D. Vohs4
1
Florida State University; 2University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; 3Brown University;
and 4University of Utah

Summary—Self-esteem has become a household word. those with high self-esteem show stronger in-group favorit-
Teachers, parents, therapists, and others have focused efforts ism, which may increase prejudice and discrimination.
on boosting self-esteem, on the assumption that high self- Neither high nor low self-esteem is a direct cause of vio-
esteem will cause many positive outcomes and benefits—an lence. Narcissism leads to increased aggression in retaliation
assumption that is critically evaluated in this review. for wounded pride. Low self-esteem may contribute to external-
Appraisal of the effects of self-esteem is complicated by izing behavior and delinquency, although some studies have
several factors. Because many people with high self-esteem found that there are no effects or that the effect of self-esteem
exaggerate their successes and good traits, we emphasize ob- vanishes when other variables are controlled. The highest and
jective measures of outcomes. High self-esteem is also a het- lowest rates of cheating and bullying are found in different sub-
erogeneous category, encompassing people who frankly accept categories of high self-esteem.
their good qualities along with narcissistic, defensive, and Self-esteem has a strong relation to happiness. Although the
conceited individuals. research has not clearly established causation, we are per-
The modest correlations between self-esteem and school suaded that high self-esteem does lead to greater happiness.
performance do not indicate that high self-esteem leads to Low self-esteem is more likely than high to lead to depression
good performance. Instead, high self-esteem is partly the re- under some circumstances. Some studies support the buffer hy-
sult of good school performance. Efforts to boost the self- pothesis, which is that high self-esteem mitigates the effects of
esteem of pupils have not been shown to improve academic stress, but other studies come to the opposite conclusion, indi-
performance and may sometimes be counterproductive. Job cating that the negative effects of low self-esteem are mainly
performance in adults is sometimes related to self-esteem, al- felt in good times. Still others find that high self-esteem leads to
though the correlations vary widely, and the direction of cau- happier outcomes regardless of stress or other circumstances.
sality has not been established. Occupational success may High self-esteem does not prevent children from smoking,
boost self-esteem rather than the reverse. Alternatively, self- drinking, taking drugs, or engaging in early sex. If anything,
esteem may be helpful only in some job contexts. Laboratory high self-esteem fosters experimentation, which may increase
studies have generally failed to find that self-esteem causes early sexual activity or drinking, but in general effects of self-
good task performance, with the important exception that esteem are negligible. One important exception is that high
high self-esteem facilitates persistence after failure. self-esteem reduces the chances of bulimia in females.
People high in self-esteem claim to be more likable and at- Overall, the benefits of high self-esteem fall into two cate-
tractive, to have better relationships, and to make better im- gories: enhanced initiative and pleasant feelings. We have not
pressions on others than people with low self-esteem, but found evidence that boosting self-esteem (by therapeutic in-
objective measures disconfirm most of these beliefs. Narcis- terventions or school programs) causes benefits. Our findings
sists are charming at first but tend to alienate others eventu- do not support continued widespread efforts to boost self-
ally. Self-esteem has not been shown to predict the quality or esteem in the hope that it will by itself foster improved out-
duration of relationships. comes. In view of the heterogeneity of high self-esteem, indis-
High self-esteem makes people more willing to speak up in criminate praise might just as easily promote narcissism, with
groups and to criticize the group’s approach. Leadership its less desirable consequences. Instead, we recommend using
does not stem directly from self-esteem, but self-esteem may praise to boost self-esteem as a reward for socially desirable
have indirect effects. Relative to people with low self-esteem, behavior and self-improvement.

Most people feel that self-esteem is important. It is difficult, tion that bears on their own self-esteem, such as being told that
if not impossible, for people to remain indifferent to informa- they are incompetent, attractive, untrustworthy, or lovable. In-
creases and decreases in self-esteem generally bring strong
Address correspondence to Roy F. Baumeister, Department of Psychology, emotional reactions. Moreover, these fluctuations are often co-
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1270. incident with major successes and failures in life. Subjective

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 Copyright © 2003 American Psychological Society 1


Benefits of Self-Esteem

experience creates the impression that self-esteem rises when Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968), showed that teachers’ false,
one wins a contest, garners an award, solves a problem, or gains unfounded beliefs about their students later became objective,
acceptance to a social group, and that it falls with corresponding verifiable realities in the performance of those students. In the
failures. This pervasive correlation may well strengthen the im- same way, it is quite plausible that either high or low self-
pression that one’s level of self-esteem is not just the outcome, esteem, even if initially false, may generate a self-fulfilling
but indeed the cause, of life’s major successes and failures. prophecy and bring about changes in the objective reality of the
But is self-esteem a cause of important consequences in self and its world.
life? In this monograph, we report the results of a survey of Then again, self-esteem might not bring about such changes.
major research findings bearing on this question. Our mission Many researchers, clinicians, teachers, parents, and pundits
was to conduct a thorough review of empirical findings—em- have taken it as an article of faith that high self-esteem will
phasizing the most methodologically rigorous research stud- bring about positive outcomes. Such an assumption was per-
ies—to ascertain whether high self-esteem is in fact a cause of haps reasonable several decades ago, given the lack of firm
positive or negative outcomes. We anticipated we would find data either way and the anecdotal impressions and theoretical
that self-esteem has positive value for bringing about some hy- bases for assuming that self-esteem has strong effects. It is par-
pothesized benefits, but not others. Such a pattern would pre- ticularly understandable that practitioners would accept this as-
sumably allow an accurate and nuanced understanding of just sumption without proof, because they cannot generally afford
what high self-esteem is good for. This would be beneficial to admonish their suffering clients to hang on for a few decades
both for theory (in that it would promote a better understanding until needed research is conducted. They must use the best evi-
of self-esteem as well as the outcomes it predicts) and for prac- dence available at the time to design their interventions.
tical applications—and even for determining whether efforts at By now, however, the excuse of inadequate data is begin-
boosting self-esteem are worth undertaking in order to solve ning to wear thin. The fascination with self-esteem that began
particular social problems. to spread during the 1970s infected researchers too, and in the
Self-esteem is literally defined by how much value people past couple of decades, a number of methodologically rigor-
place on themselves. It is the evaluative component of self- ous, large-scale investigations on the possible effects of self-
knowledge. High self-esteem refers to a highly favorable glo- esteem have been conducted. We do not think all the final an-
bal evaluation of the self. Low self-esteem, by definition, refers swers are in, but many of them are taking shape. There is no
to an unfavorable definition of the self. (Whether this signifies longer any justification for simply relying on anecdotes, im-
an absolutely unfavorable or relatively unfavorable evaluation pressions, and untested assumptions about the value of self-
is a problematic distinction, which we discuss later in connec- esteem.
tion with the distribution of self-esteem scores.) Self-esteem
does not carry any definitional requirement of accuracy what-
WHY STUDY SELF-ESTEEM?
soever. Thus, high self-esteem may refer to an accurate, justi-
fied, balanced appreciation of one’s worth as a person and In the heady days of the 1970s, it might have seemed possi-
one’s successes and competencies, but it can also refer to an in- ble to assert that self-esteem has a causal effect on every aspect
flated, arrogant, grandiose, unwarranted sense of conceited su- of human life, and by the 1980s, the California legislature
periority over others. By the same token, low self-esteem can might well have been persuaded that funding a task force to in-
be either an accurate, well-founded understanding of one’s crease the self-esteem of Californians would ultimately pro-
shortcomings as a person or a distorted, even pathological duce a huge financial return because reducing welfare dependency,
sense of insecurity and inferiority. unwanted pregnancy, school failure, crime, drug addiction, and
Self-esteem is thus perception rather than reality. It refers to other problems would save large amounts of taxpayers’ money.
a person’s belief about whether he or she is intelligent and at- However, as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and other grand
tractive, for example, and it does not necessarily say anything thinkers could assert if they were alive today, even the most
about whether the person actually is intelligent and attractive. elaborate and persuasive theories about human behavior do not
To show that self-esteem is itself important, then, research generally receive empirical support in all aspects. Thus, we
would have to demonstrate that people’s beliefs about them- note at the outset that we did not expect all the extravagant
selves have important consequences regardless of what the un- claims of the self-esteem movement to be supported.
derlying realities are. Put more simply, there would have to be Even if the self-esteem movement was wrong in crucial re-
benefits that derive from believing that one is intelligent, respects, its positive aspects and contributions deserve to be rec-
gardless of whether one actually is intelligent. To say this is not ognized and celebrated. The self-esteem movement showed
to dismiss self-esteem as trivial. People’s beliefs shape their ac- that the American public was willing to listen to psychologists
tions in many important ways, and these actions in turn shape and to change its institutional practices on the basis of what
their social reality and the social realities of the people around psychology had to teach. It would not be in psychology’s best
them. The classic study Pygmalion in the Classroom, by interest to chastise the American public for accepting the ad-

2 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003


R.F. Baumeister et al.

vice of psychologists. If errors were committed, perhaps psy- Academic and professional psychologists have been more
chologists should reduce their own self-esteem a bit and hesitant to endorse strong categorical claims. Eminent clinical
humbly resolve that next time they will wait for a more thor- psychologist Albert Ellis, for example, is convinced that “self-
ough and solid empirical basis before making policy recom- esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman be-
mendations to the American public. Regardless of the outcome cause it’s conditional” (cited in Epstein, 2001, p. 72). Accord-
of the self-esteem movement, it showed that there is a voice for ing to Ellis, people would be better off if they stopped trying to
psychology in public policy and discourse. If psychology uses convince themselves that they are worthy. Others believe that
that voice judiciously, it may still be able to make a major con- concerns about self-esteem are a peculiar feature of Western in-
tribution to the well-being of society. dividualist cultures. According to this perspective, the search
for high self-esteem is not a universal human motive, but a cul-
tural or ideological artifact. Indeed, such a motive is difficult to
The Appeal of Self-Esteem detect in collectivist cultures, and especially in Japan (Heine,
As self-aware and self-reflective creatures, many people in- Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama, 1999). Even in Western culture,
tuitively recognize the importance of self-esteem. Not surpris- the need for high self-esteem seems to be a rather recent devel-
ingly, a great deal of psychological theorizing has focused on opment (Baumeister, 1987). The Judeo-Christian tradition has
the motivation to protect and, if possible, enhance self-esteem. long considered modesty and humility as virtues conducive to
Research is showing that even psychodynamic defense mecha- spiritual growth. In this tradition, high self-esteem is suspect
nisms, which Freud originally understood as ways of keeping because it opens the door to sentiments of self-importance.
threatening sexual and aggressive impulses at bay, serve as Medieval theologians considered pride or vainglory to be par-
strategies to bolster self-esteem (for a review, see Baumeister, ticularly satanic and thus a deadly sin. To combat it, religious
Dale, & Sommer, 1998). devotees cultivated an unattractive appearance (e.g., shorn hair,
But the desire to feel good about oneself is certainly not the no makeup, unfashionable clothes, no jewelry), spoke with
only self-related motive at play. Having to cope with reality, self-effacement, and submitted to degrading exercises (e.g.,
people are also motivated to perceive themselves accurately begging, prostrations, self-flagellations).
and admit awareness of their undesirable characteristics (Swann, Such practices are but a faint memory in contemporary pop-
Stein-Seroussi, & Giesler, 1992; Trope, 1986). Nevertheless, ular culture, in which high self-esteem seems to reign supreme.
people would rather learn positive things about themselves Prodded by Assemblyman John Vasconcellos, the then gover-
than negative things (Sedikides, 1993). Although they may nor of California George Deukmeijian agreed in 1986 to fund a
want to know whether they are good or not, they much prefer Task Force on Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsi-
to learn that they are good. bility with a budget of $245,000 per annum for several years.
Over the past few decades, the need for high self-esteem has Vasconcellos argued that raising self-esteem would help solve
risen from an individual to a societal concern. North American many of the state’s problems, including crime, teen pregnancy,
society in particular has come to embrace the idea that high drug abuse, school underachievement, and pollution. At one
self-esteem is not only desirable in its own right, but also the point, he expressed the hope that raising self-esteem would
central psychological source from which all manner of positive help balance the state’s budget because people with high self-
behaviors and outcomes spring. This strong psychological esteem earn more money than people with low self-esteem and
claim has begun to permeate popular beliefs. Its corollary, the therefore pay more taxes (Winegar, 1990). It is easy to dismiss
idea that low self-esteem lies at the root of individual and thus and satirize such claims (Dawes, 1994). However, Vasconcellos
societal problems and dysfunctions, has obvious implications and the task force also speculated astutely about the possibility
for interventions on both the individual and the societal level. that self-esteem might protect people from being overwhelmed
The hope that such interventions might work has sustained an by life’s challenges and thus reduce failures and misbehaviors,
ambitious social movement. Nathaniel Branden, a leading fig- much as a vaccine protects against disease.
ure in the self-esteem movement, stated categorically that Concurrent with its activities in the field, which included
“self-esteem has profound consequences for every aspect of creating self-esteem committees in many California counties,
our existence” (Branden, 1994, p. 5), and, more pointedly, that the task force assembled a team of scholars to survey the rele-
he “cannot think of a single psychological problem—from anx- vant literature. The results were presented in an edited volume
iety and depression, to fear of intimacy or of success, to spouse (Mecca, Smelser, & Vasconcellos, 1989). Echoing Branden
battery or child molestation—that is not traceable to the prob- (1984), Smelser (1989) prefaced the report by stating that
lem of low self-esteem” (Branden, 1984, p. 12). Other advo- “many, if not most, of the major problems plaguing society
cates of the movement have endorsed this sentiment. Andrew have roots in the low self-esteem of many of the people who
Mecca, for example, is cited as saying that “virtually every so- make up society” (p. 1). But the findings did not validate the
cial problem can be traced to people’s lack of self-love” high hopes of the task force, and Smelser had to acknowledge
(Davis, 1988, p. 10). that “one of the disappointing aspects of every [italics added]

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 3



chapter in this volume . . . is how low the associations between al., 1989, volume). In the quest for enhanced self-esteem, any
self-esteem and its [presumed] consequences are in research to tool in the psychological—and pseudopsychological—box is
date” (p. 15). Given that the correlations were so low, the ques- thrown into the fray, including
tion of whether low self-esteem in fact caused the societal
disparate psychological models that have given rise to such popular
problems did not even arise. notions as the “inner child”; the “self-image”; principles of proper
The lack of supportive data created a dilemma. Should a no- grieving; “super learning”; “community networking”; “relaxation
tion as attractive as self-esteem be abandoned and replaced techniques” and their effects on overall mental and physical well-be-
with more promising concepts, or should the validity of the ev- ing; the principles of “neuro-linguistic programming”; and the well-
idence be questioned? The editors and the authors opted for a founded scientific basis for the connection between the body and the
mix of these two strategies. Some retreated to a defense of self- mind and the effect of this interface on overall wellness. (NASE,
esteem on a priori grounds. Undeterred, Smelser (1989) main- 2000)
tained that Even a contributor to the volume edited by Mecca et al. (1989)
diminished self-esteem stands as a powerful independent variable argued that self-esteem must be enhanced, although its causal
(condition, cause, factor) in the genesis of major social problems. We role is far from established. “To abandon the search for esteem-
all know this to be true, and it is really not necessary to create a special related solutions . . . is to admit defeat before exploring all our
California task force on the subject to convince us. The real problem options” (Covington, 1989, p. 74).
we must address—and which the contributors to this volume ad- Was it reasonable to start boosting self-esteem before all the
dress—is how we can determine that it is scientifically true. (p. 8) data were in? Perhaps. We recognize that many practitioners
and applied psychologists must deal with problems before all
Others, however, acknowledged the limitations of the findings the relevant research can be conducted. Still, by now there are
and called for additional study, or tried to fit more complex the- ample data on self-esteem. Our task in this monograph is to
oretical models of self-knowledge to the data. Our report is fo- take a fresh look and provide an integrative summary.
cused primarily on studies conducted since the review by the
California task force. Instead of examining the merits of the
more complex models of self, we have retained the hypothesis An Epidemic of Low Self-Esteem?
that global self-esteem causes desirable, adaptive, and benefi- A key assumption of the self-esteem movement is that too
cial behaviors. There is a certain beauty to this hypothesis be- many people have low self-esteem. Under this assumption,
cause it is simple, clear, and testable. There have also been raising self-esteem becomes a meaningful goal. But what does
sufficient methodological advances in study design and statisti- “too many” mean? Self-esteem scales are designed to capture
cal analysis that warrant a fresh look at the evidence. valid individual differences that exist in a population. Thus, a
Meanwhile, the self-esteem movement was not deterred by good measure will yield a distribution of scores from low to
the disappointing findings of the task force. After it was dis- high. However, unlike some other measurement instruments,
banded in 1995, the National Council for Self-Esteem inherited such as IQ tests, that are constructed to yield symmetrical dis-
its mandate, which was subsequently taken on by the National tributions centered around an arbitrary mean (e.g., 100), self-
Association for Self-Esteem, or NASE. Vasconcellos (now a esteem scales allow skewed distributions to emerge. The
member of the California Senate) and Jack Canfield (Chicken average score typically lies far above the midpoint of the scale,
Soup for the Soul) are on NASE’s advisory board, and such often by more than a standard deviation (Baumeister, Tice, &
media personalities as Anthony Robbins (Unlimited Power), Hutton, 1989). The fact that most people score toward the high
Bernie Siegel (Love, Medicine, and Miracles), and Gloria end of self-esteem measures casts serious doubt on the notion
Steinem (A Revolution From Within: A Book of Self-Esteem) that American society is suffering from widespread low self-
are members of a “Masters Coalition,” created by NASE. The esteem. If anything, self-esteem in America is high. The aver-
mission statement of NASE minces no words about the pre- age person regards himself or herself as above average.
sumed benefits of self-esteem. Its goal is to “promote aware- The skewed distribution of self-esteem scores raises two
ness of and provide vision, leadership and advocacy for methodological issues. First, when researchers split samples at
improving the human condition through the enhancement of the median to distinguish between respondents with high ver-
self-esteem” (NASE, 2000). The goal of the Masters Coalition sus low self-esteem, the range of scores among respondents
is no less ambitious. “It is hoped that the Master Coalition can, classified as having low self-esteem is much greater than the
in a meaningful way, facilitate the actualization of society and range of scores among respondents classified as having high
lead to the amelioration, if not elimination, of various negative self-esteem. A good number of respondents in the low self-es-
influences which have operated in part to trivialize and demean teem category have scores above the midpoint of the scale. In
the human condition” (NASE, 2000). other words, the classification of a person as someone with low
It is hard not to conclude that the self-esteem movement has self-esteem has no longer an absolute, but only a relative mean-
ignored its own major scholarly document (i.e., the Mecca et ing. Second, correlations involving variables with skewed dis-

4 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



tributions tend to be smaller than correlations involving variables no objective criterion against which to compare self-reported
with symmetric distributions. Moreover, when self-esteem is self-esteem, because of the nature of the construct: Self-esteem
raised selectively for those respondents with the lowest initial essentially consists of how a person thinks about and evaluates
values, correlations between self-esteem and relevant outcome the self. In the case of intelligence, for example, self-ratings
variables shrink further, not necessarily because the elevation can be compared against objective performance on intellectual
of self-esteem had the desired causal effect, but simply because tests, and the results can (and often do) show that people’s self-
of the restriction in the range of scores. It is always necessary reports of their own intelligence are wrong. But there is no
to ask whether relevant outcomes also changed in the desired known basis for saying that certain people really have more or
direction. less self-esteem than they think they have.
The standard finding that most self-esteem scores are high To overcome these measurement problems, some research-
raises the possibility that at least some scores are affected by ers measure implicit, or unfakeable, self-esteem by using a va-
deliberate or unwitting self-enhancement (Krueger, 1998). riety of subtle methods, such as reaction times to good and bad
Brown (1986), for example, found that people high in self-es- thoughts that can be paired with the self (Greenwald & Farn-
teem were also most likely to rate themselves more positively ham, 2000). Though promising, this research has only recently
than they rated other people. Because self-enhancement may begun, and it therefore does not play a significant role in this
involve invalid and undesirable distortions of the self-concept, review. Despite the potential pitfalls of explicit (i.e., self-report)
it is unwarranted to rush to boost everyone’s self-esteem. measures, the fact that scores on different scales are positively
In short, we find no evidence that modern Western societies correlated (e.g., Greenwald & Farnham, 2000) is an indication
are suffering from an epidemic of low self-esteem. If anything, that they can be used with some confidence. Even more signifi-
self-esteem seems generally high in most North American sam- cantly, the Rosenberg scale, which is by far the most popular
ples. Regardless of their race, gender, or socioeconomic status, among researchers, has been shown to be highly reliable (e.g.,
Americans already appear to live in a “culture of self-worth” if a person completes the scale on two occasions, the two
(Twenge & Campbell, 2001, p. 325). Indeed, levels of self- scores tend to be similar). As a measure of global self-esteem,
esteem increased at a time when the self-esteem movement be- this scale is unidimensional (Gray-Little, Williams, & Han-
moaned the lack of self-love. Disturbingly, academic performance cock, 1997; Robins, Hendin, & Trzesniewski, 2001). Indeed,
decreased at the same time (Twenge & Campbell, 2001). its reliability is so high that a single item (“I have high self-
esteem”) may be sufficient (Robins et al., 2001).

PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES
Heterogeneity of High Self-Esteem
The high internal consistency of self-esteem measures may
Measurement of Self-Esteem
mask the possibility that a variety of psychological processes
Many scales are available for measuring self-esteem, and contribute to high (or low) scores. One approach to studying
different investigations have used different ones, which com- the heterogeneity of self-esteem is to examine the pattern of
pounds the difficulty of comparing results from different inves- scores across multiple measurement instruments. Schneider
tigations (especially if the results are inconsistent). Blascovich and Turkat (1975) suspected that some people’s high self-esteem
and Tomaka (1991) reviewed multiple measures and found is defensive rather than genuine, and that these individuals
them of uneven quality, giving high marks to only a few (such could be identified if they also scored high on the Marlowe-
as Fleming & Courtney’s, 1984, revision of Janis & Field’s, Crowne Social Desirability Scale (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960).
1959, scale, and Rosenberg’s, 1965, global self-esteem mea- The concept of defensive self-esteem has recently been refined
sure). In essence, self-esteem scales ask people to rate them- by the distinction between deception of others (i.e., impression
selves in response to questions such as “Are you a worthwhile management) and deception of the self (see Paulhus, 2002, for
individual?” “Are you good at school or work?” “Do people a review). High self-esteem is considered defensive if it is cou-
like you?” and “Are you reliable and trustworthy?” When re- pled with high scores on a self-deception scale (which has
searchers check self-esteem measures against the so-called lie items such as “I always know why I do things”).
scales (also called measures of social desirability, because they Taking a different approach, Kernis and his colleagues (see
assess tendencies to give distorted, even unrealistic answers Kernis & Waschull, 1995, for a review) measure both the over-
just to make a good impression), they conclude that self-esteem all level and the temporal stability of self-esteem. In many
scores are somewhat contaminated by people’s efforts to make studies, the stability of self-esteem, either by itself or in combi-
themselves look good. These measures also obscure needed nation with level of self-esteem, has been shown to predict behav-
distinctions between defensive, inflated, narcissistic, and so- ioral outcomes. Baumeister and his colleagues (e.g., Baumeister,
called genuine high self-esteem. (We discuss different varieties 1993; Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996) found that behaviors
of high self-esteem in the next section.) Unfortunately, there is and outcomes are often more variable for people high in self-

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 5



esteem than for people low in self-esteem. For example, studies Correlations between self-esteem and depression are of only
often fail to yield a significant correlation between aggression moderate strength, ranging from .4 to .6 (e.g., Joiner, Alfano, &
or violence and self-esteem, in part because high self-esteem is Metalsky, 1992). Also, a theoretical standpoint indicates that
associated with both the presence and the absence of aggres- although the psychological processes associated with self-
sion. Kernis’s work leads to similar conclusions. People with esteem and depression may overlap somewhat (e.g., Abramson,
high but unstable self-esteem score higher on measures of hos- Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989), they are not identical. Rather, the
tility than do people with low self-esteem (whether stable or concept of depression has been characterized by a constellation
unstable), whereas people with high but stable self-esteem are of symptoms, of which low self-esteem is one (Roberts &
the least hostile (Kernis, Grannemann, & Barclay, 1989). In Monroe, 1999). But low self-esteem is neither necessary nor
other words, people with high self-esteem are found at the ex- sufficient for depression.
tremes of both high and low hostility. A recent analysis of the interrelations among self-esteem,
A third approach is to measure narcissism along with, or neuroticism, locus of control, and feelings of being effective
even instead of, self-esteem. The construct of narcissism in- points to a more serious methodological problem regarding their
volves highly favorable, even grandiose views of self, a sense overlap. Judge, Erez, and Bono (2002) found that these con-
of being special or unique, fantasies of personal brilliance or structs are highly related and reflect one overarching construct
beauty, and the belief that one is entitled to privileges and ad- (which they said was neuroticism, broadly defined). Judge et al.
miration by others (see American Psychiatric Association, concluded that the ability of any of these constructs to uniquely
2000). In normal populations, scores on the Narcissistic Per- (i.e., independently) predict outcomes is quite poor, and they
sonality Inventory (Emmons, 1984; Raskin & Hall, 1981) cor- urged psychological scientists to begin thinking of each con-
relate substantially with self-esteem (Rhodewalt & Morf, 1995; struct in tandem with the others. We concur with this suggestion
Sinha & Krueger, 1998). The heterogeneity of high self-esteem and hope that researchers will include more of these measures in
is indicated by the finding that some people with high self- studies of the effect of self-esteem on objective outcomes.
esteem are not narcissistic, whereas others are; the reverse is
not true (i.e., there are very few narcissists with low self-
esteem). Bushman and Baumeister (1998) measured both self- Global Versus Domain-Specific Self-Esteem
esteem and narcissism in laboratory studies of aggression. Nar- The heterogeneous nature of people who score high on self-
cissism, but not self-esteem, predicted aggression, and only esteem measures is not the only reason why the predictive
when the target was someone who had previously insulted the power of global measures of self-esteem is limited. Another
participant. The idea that narcissistically high self-esteem is reason is that it is difficult to detect a correspondence between
unhealthy is further supported by the finding that narcissists’ a global attitude and specific behaviors or outcomes (Fishbein
high self-esteem tends to be unstable (Rhodewalt, Madrian, & & Ajzen, 1975). It is not to be expected, for example, that a
Cheney, 1998) and self-defensive (Paulhus, 1998). global sense of being worthy, competent, and popular will pre-
Taken together, these lines of research suggest that some dict performance on a trigonometry quiz. Many people may
low correlations between self-esteem and socially relevant be- consider mathematical ability to be irrelevant to global self-
haviors or outcomes conceal the tendency for different categories appraisal, and so their self-esteem could be utterly irrelevant to
of high self-esteem to produce opposite responses. Researchers how well they can perform numerical calculations. Predictions
who believe in the value of so-called genuine or healthy self- improve when self-esteem is measured for the domain of inter-
esteem may find that they can obtain more valid correlations est and among people who consider this domain to be person-
with desirable outcomes if they control variables such as nar- ally important (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001). If relevant domains
cissism, self-deception, or temporal stability. The broader im- are hierarchically organized, it is important to measure self-
plication is, however, that the category of people with high esteem at the appropriate level of specificity. If the domain be-
self-esteem is a mixed bag that contains individuals whose self- comes too narrow, the assessment of specific self-esteem may
opinions differ in important ways. yield only trivial results. For example, a high correlation between
Theorists and researchers have linked low self-esteem to people’s success at doing long division and their self-evaluation
other constructs, generally focusing on the links between low for this task may simply result from people’s awareness of their
self-esteem and pathologies such as depression. Recently, low ability in this domain. If so, any attempts to improve perfor-
self-esteem has begun to be associated with more general con- mance by way of enhancing self-esteem would fail.
cepts such as emotional lability (a tendency for strong emotions The difficulties of relating global self-esteem to specific be-
to occur in both directions) and low internal locus of control (a haviors may be overcome, in part, by aggregating behaviors
generalized belief that the self is not in control of what happens). into bundles. But aside from differences in levels of specificity
Although there are moderate associations between low self- of measurement, there is also a difference in affectivity. Global
esteem and pathology (see the section on Coping and Depres- self-esteem is heavily invested with feelings about the self,
sion), there is also evidence against the notion that the con- whereas specific facets of self-esteem include a variety of self-
structs of low self-esteem and depression are isomorphic. related thoughts (Brown, 1998; Rosenberg, Schooler, Schoen-

6 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



bach, & Rosenberg, 1995). It is perhaps because of its high af- juggling sphere. If the researcher also decides to use self-reports
fective relevance that global self-esteem has been the preferred to measure performance, almost exactly the same question
target for well-intentioned interventions. Interventions at the could be used as a measure of performance. The resulting high
level of domain-specific self-esteem would arguably become correlation between the measures of self-esteem and perfor-
both more fragmented and less affectively charged. For these mance would reflect nothing more than the fact that the same
reasons, we focus our review on global self-esteem. question was asked to measure different constructs.
It is essential to keep in mind that self-esteem is measured
Floccinaucinihilipilification almost exclusively (and unavoidably) by self-report. People
score high in self-esteem because they respond to a question-
The word floccinaucinihilipilification is allegedly the longest
naire by endorsing favorable statements about themselves. The
word in the Oxford English Dictionary, and it is defined as “the
habit of speaking well of oneself does not abruptly cease when
action or habit of estimating as worthless.” The definition of low
the respondent turns from the self-esteem scale to the question-
self-esteem involves making a disparaging or low-worth judg-
naire asking for self-report of other behaviors. People who like
ment about the self, yet there is mounting evidence that people
to describe themselves in glowing terms will be inclined to re-
with low self-esteem are not merely negative about themselves.
port that they get along well with others, are physically attrac-
Rather, they express a generally negative attitude toward many
tive, do well in school and work, refrain from undesirable
events, circumstances, people, and other realities. That is, they
actions, and the like. That is how they get high scores in self-
have a tendency toward floccinaucinihilipilification.
esteem, but researchers may easily mistake this identical ten-
The problem this raises for the researcher is twofold. First,
dency as evidence that self-esteem predicts or even causes a
it is difficult to distinguish the general negativity from the spe-
broad range of positive outcomes. Over and over during our
cific low self-esteem. A good example of this problem emerged
survey of the literature, we found that researchers obtained
in the research literature on prejudice. In early work, research-
more impressive evidence of the benefits of self-esteem when
ers assumed that people with low self-esteem would have more
they relied on self-reported outcomes than when they relied on
prejudice than others toward out-groups, and studies in which
objective outcomes. The research on the relationship between
people simply rated other groups seemingly confirmed that
self-esteem and physical attractiveness provides a good exam-
people with low self-esteem expressed more negative attitudes
ple of such a discrepancy. Most self-esteem scales do not con-
toward them than did people with higher self-esteem (see
tain items that specifically ask whether respondents consider
Wills, 1981, for review). But Crocker and Schwartz (1985)
themselves physically attractive, but they do measure the glo-
pointed out that if people rate themselves and their in-groups
bal tendency to speak well of oneself. It seems plausible that
negatively, it is hardly fair to label them as prejudiced for rating
people who speak well of themselves in general would rate
out-groups negatively, too. Such general floccinaucinihilipilifi-
their physical attractiveness more highly than others. Then
cation can be corrected by subtracting the ratings of self or the
again, it is plausible that physically attractive people would end
in-group from the ratings of the out-group, and when this was
up with higher self-esteem than other people, if only because
done, the finding was reversed: People with high self-esteem
attractive people are treated more favorably than unattractive
showed greater in-group bias and greater prejudice than people
ones throughout life—they are more popular, more sought af-
with low self-esteem (see also Aberson, Healy, & Romero,
ter, more valued by lovers and friends, and so forth.
2000; Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990; Crocker, Thompson, McGraw,
Several studies have explored correlations between global
& Ingerman, 1987).
self-esteem and self-rated attractiveness, generally finding very
Second, floccinaucinihilipilification raises the very substan-
strong positive relationships. Harter (1993) described results
tial danger that self-reports will show spurious correlations be-
from multiple studies indicating that the correlation was around
tween self-esteem and other outcomes. A general tendency
.85. This is a remarkably strong connection, indicating that
toward floccinaucinihilipilification may cause certain people to
people’s physical attractiveness accounted for more than 70%
describe themselves in disparaging terms, thus generating low
of the variance in their self-esteem. If this result is correct, it
scores on self-esteem, as well as to describe their lives and out-
means that people’s self-esteem is mainly based on their ap-
comes in disparaging terms, thus furnishing the appearance of
pearance. But one cannot easily rule out the possibility that the
maladaptive behaviors and pathology. This is one reason why it
correlation received an unfair boost by the general tendency to
is important to obtain objective outcome measures.
speak well of oneself. People who score high on self-esteem by
claiming to be wonderful people in general may claim to be
Need for Objective Measures physically attractive, and people who rate themselves relatively
All too often, results involving self-esteem are based on the poorly overall may derogate their appearance.
self-report of outcome variables. The problem this raises can Hence, it is important to obtain more objective measures of
be illustrated by the case of a researcher who asks people, physical appearance, to match up with the subjective measures
“How good are you at juggling red beanbags?” and then takes of self-esteem. Diener, Wolsic, and Fujita (1995) obtained self-
their answers as indications of their self-esteem in the beanbag- esteem scores from a broad sample of individuals and then

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 7



photographed everyone. The photographs were shown to other sults of multiple studies) by C.T. Miller and Downey (1999)
judges, who rated them for attractiveness, thus providing an found a significant correlation (r ϭ Ϫ.24) between actual body
objective measure of physical attractiveness unaffected by self- weight and self-esteem. But the correlation of self-esteem with
report. The ratings of attractiveness based on full-length pic- self-rated body weight was much stronger (r ϭ Ϫ.72). Thus,
tures showed a trivial correlation of .06 with self-esteem—not people with high self-esteem are a little slimmer than others,
even a significant correlation. Head-and-shoulders photos fared but not nearly as much as they think.
only slightly better, with a correlation of .14, which suggests The broad implication of these examples is that self-reports
that physical attractiveness accounted for less than 2% of self- are likely to contain substantial biases that can easily yield mis-
esteem. Even this figure may be inflated, because it could be leading empirical findings. People with high self-esteem claim
that people with high self-esteem take particular care to present to be successful, attractive, and wonderful in many respects.
themselves in a favorable light, such as by wearing attractive Objective evidence sometimes paints a much different picture,
clothing and jewelry. When these props were removed to pro- and many of the ostensible (self-reported) advantages claimed
duce unadorned photos of the participants’ faces, the correla- by people with high self-esteem are clearly disconfirmed.
tion of judge-rated attractiveness with self-esteem was .00. In The systematic discrepancies between objective and self-
that same investigation, however, self-reported physical attrac- reported outcomes led us to conclude that we should set up our
tiveness was found to have a hefty (r ϭ .59) correlation with literature search and review to emphasize objective measures
self-esteem. Thus, people’s ratings of their own good looks ac- of outcomes whenever possible. This vastly reduced the
counted for 35% of the variance in their self-esteem, whereas amount of material we could use. But the material that re-
objective ratings of their looks had a negligible relationship to mained is far more reliable and convincing insofar as the re-
their self-esteem. People with high self-esteem are gorgeous in sults are based on objective measures.
their own eyes, but objective observers do not see any difference. To be sure, objective measures are not always possible to
Similar findings were reported by Gabriel, Critelli, and Ee obtain, and reliance on self-report is thus inevitable in some
(1994), who obtained peer ratings of attractiveness from photo- spheres. For example, in the case of happiness, there is almost
graphs. The correlations with self-esteem were negligible: r ϭ no alternative to self-report. Even when it is necessary to use
ϩ.01 for males and r ϭ Ϫ.04 for females. Again, though, peo- self-report, however, we urge researchers to emphasize the
ple with high self-esteem rated themselves as more attractive most objective, concrete, and verifiable data possible. It seems
than those with low self-esteem. likely, for example, that global self-ratings of intelligence are
The discrepancy is sobering. What seems at first to be a more vulnerable to bias and inflation than self-reports of grades
powerful relationship between physical good looks and high in specific courses or scores on specific tests. Behavioral self-
self-esteem turns out to be nothing more than a pattern of con- reports (e.g., “How many cigarettes did you smoke yester-
sistency in how favorably people rate themselves. Those who day?”) should be more reliable than vague or “in general” rat-
say they are very good overall tend to say that they look good, ings of one’s own behavior (e.g., “How much do you smoke?
too. When other people are brought in to judge unadorned pho- Very much, some, not very much, or not at all?”).
tographs, however, people with high self-esteem do not emerge The bias in self-report may well be partly responsible for
as any more attractive than people with low self-esteem. the popularity of self-esteem among teachers, parents, thera-
Inflated views of one’s own attributes are not confined to pists, and others who seek to intervene in people’s lives in a
physical attractiveness. Gabriel et al. (1994) also asked partici- positive fashion. A rise in self-esteem may well cause a person
pants to rate their own intelligence and then gave them an to honestly believe that he or she is doing better in many
intelligence (IQ) test. People with high self-esteem rated them- spheres, even if these beliefs are utterly false and stem from the
selves as significantly more intelligent than people with low positive illusions that attend high self-esteem. If both teacher
self-esteem (r ϭ .35). But the results of the objective IQ test and student believe that boosting the student’s self-esteem has
did not justify these favorable claims, for there was no signifi- led to improvements in academic performance, the entire enter-
cant relationship between self-esteem and IQ scores (r ϭ Ϫ.07). prise of boosting self-esteem is likely to be marked by a seduc-
The authors also reported that self-esteem was significantly tive feeling of success and efficacy. The unfortunate fact that
correlated (r ϭ .38) with the discrepancy between self-rated in- academic performance may not have changed at all by objec-
telligence and objectively measured intelligence. This finding tive measures might be overlooked in the context of the mutu-
confirms that people with high self-esteem exaggerate their in- ally sustained social reality of the belief that performance has
telligence more than people with low self-esteem. improved.
Weight has long been associated with self-esteem, espe-
cially in modern Western cultures that glorify slender, young-
looking bodies (especially for women). Hence, a lighter body Direction of Causality
weight should be associated with high self-esteem, whereas A great many researchers have proceeded by administering
obesity should be linked to low self-esteem. Consistent with a self-esteem scale and some behavioral measures and then
that view, a meta-analysis (which statistically combines the re- computing the correlation. Such an approach can establish

8 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



links between self-esteem and other variables. Correlations in school performance at Time 1 are controlled statistically (in
cannot establish causality, however, and so the meaning of such effect, self-esteem at Time 1 predicts change in school perfor-
correlations remains highly ambiguous. As anyone who has mance between Times 1 and 2), then causal inferences may be
taken a research methodology course knows, a correlation be- made, albeit somewhat tentatively.
tween X and Y could mean that X causes Y, that Y causes X, or Insisting that self-esteem must predict achievement at Time
that some other variable causes both. Thus, if self-esteem cor- 2 after controlling for achievement at Time 1 could obscure
relates with good school performance, self-esteem might be ei- some actual causal relationships, so it should be regarded as a
ther the cause or the result of good performance, or both highly conservative way of testing the hypothesis. Suppose, for
outcomes could derive from something else, such as a privi- example, that self-esteem does consistently contribute to achieve-
leged upbringing. ment—and that self-esteem is fairly stable. Achievement at
The question of causality goes to the heart of the debate Time 1 is thus a result of prior self-esteem (say, at Time Ϫ1). If
about the self-esteem movement and interventions aimed at one controls for achievement at Time 1 when computing the
boosting self-esteem. If self-esteem causes an assortment of correlation between Time 1 self-esteem and Time 2 achieve-
positive outcomes, then it may well be worth considerable ef- ment, one may be throwing a very large baby out with the sta-
fort and expense to instill high self-esteem into children, the tistical bathwater. What in reality was a replication of causal
mentally ill, stigmatized populations, and other vulnerable or processes (Time Ϫ1 self-esteem causing Time 1 achievement,
at-risk groups. In contrast, if the correlations mean simply that and Time 1 self-esteem causing Time 2 achievement) ends up
self-esteem is an outcome of success and good behavior— looking like no relationship at all.
which is, after all, at least as plausible as the hypothesis that In short, care must be taken to avoid either overstating or
self-esteem is a cause of success—then there is little to be understating the causal influence of self-esteem.
gained by raising self-esteem.
If self-esteem is indeed an outcome rather than a cause, then METHOD OF SEARCHING THE LITERATURE
it is even plausible that raising self-esteem could backfire and
produce undesirable effects. Suppose, for example, that work- The research covered in the subsequent sections of this re-
ing hard in school leads to good grades, and good grades lead view was located in the following manner. On several occa-
to high self-esteem. Assume also that high self-esteem feels sions from January 2001 through October 2001, we searched
good, and so the rise in self-esteem could operate as an impor- the PsychINFO database and obtained a list of all articles con-
tant reinforcer for the hard work that leads to academic suc- taining “self esteem” in the abstract. Our searches yielded a to-
cess. If a school program intervenes directly to boost self- tal of 15,059 publications. We also went to the “subject”
esteem regardless of academic performance, then students can category in PsychINFO and searched for “self esteem,” finding
enjoy the rewards of self-esteem without making the effort. a total of 11,860 articles. Because these two lists overlapped
One major incentive to work hard would thereby be eliminated, substantially, we decided to rely mainly on one of them; we
and students might reduce their effort, leading to poorer aca- chose the former because it included more entries.
demic performance. Such speculations indicate the need to at- The 15,000-article list was too long to work with, so we nar-
tend to the causal processes involved in self-esteem and raise rowed it down using a series of criteria. First, we did not retain
substantial questions about the impact of boosting self-esteem. work that had not been published and whose sole source was
The claim that correlational findings can shed no light on Dissertation Abstracts International. This biased our results in
causal processes is overstated. Two patterns of correlational favor of positive effects of self-esteem, insofar as null results
findings are especially helpful for evaluating causality. First, if are difficult to publish. Second, we excluded studies designed
A causes B, or B causes A, then A and B will show up as corre- to show what causes self-esteem. In other words, we sought to
lated in most data sets. If A fails to show a significant correla- understand the consequences of self-esteem rather than its de-
tion with B, then it is fair to conclude that there is no causal terminants. Third, we generally eliminated secondary sources
relationship in either direction (assuming that measurement er- in order to obtain original data. Many book chapters, books,
ror or methodological shortcomings are not responsible for the and other writings talk about self-esteem, but our goal was to
null correlation). Put another way, null correlations falsify see what the original data indicate. We therefore included sec-
causal hypotheses. ondary sources only if they presented meta-analyses or other
Second, causes generally precede consequences in time, and authoritative literature reviews.
so correlations across time are often used to make causal infer- Three other sources of information beyond the PsychINFO
ences. If self-esteem on one occasion (Time 1) predicts school list were utilized. First, we have all been reading and writing
performance at a later time (Time 2), whereas school perfor- about self-esteem for many years, and we all felt it appropriate
mance at Time 1 does not predict self-esteem at Time 2, then to contribute any additional work from our own knowledge.
one can reasonably conclude that self-esteem is the cause and Second, sources cited in the articles from the PsychINFO
school performance is the outcome. Likewise, if self-esteem at search were also included. This was especially helpful for find-
Time 1 predicts school performance at Time 2 after differences ing null effects, because researchers who investigate self-esteem

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 9



and fail to confirm predictions often cite previous work to note tween self-esteem and scores on various achievement tests.
that their own failure is not unique. Third, in August 2001, we Creativity, however, was not consistently related to any form of
sent out a request on the Listserve of the Society for Personal- self-regard.
ity and Social Psychology asking for any new or unpublished The most definitive compilation was Hansford and Hattie’s
articles on objective outcomes of self-esteem. This request (1982) meta-analysis of 128 studies involving more than
elicited an additional five articles. 200,000 participants. These studies explored a variety of mea-
Finally, we sought to narrow our list to include only work sures of self-regard (mostly self-esteem) and a variety of objec-
on outcomes with broad social relevance. We searched for spe- tive performance measures, most of which were achievement
cific relationships between self-esteem and variables of inter- tests. The correlations reported varied widely, from Ϫ.77 to
est, such as health, sexual behavior, financial status, grades, ϩ.96, and averaged between ϩ.21 and ϩ.26 (depending on
intelligence, job performance and satisfaction, and interper- how the average was computed, how studies were weighted,
sonal relations. etc.). Hansford and Hattie concluded that overall there is a sig-
We then read the remaining articles carefully. At this point, nificant positive relationship between self-esteem and aca-
our overriding goal was to obtain studies that included objec- demic performance, with self-esteem accounting for between 4
tive evidence of the effects of self-esteem. As we have already and 7% of the variance in academic performance.
noted, some variables (such as happiness) can be assessed only More recent studies have yielded similar conclusions. Using
via self-report. Whenever possible, however, we wanted objec- standard achievement tests, Davies and Brember (1999) found
tive or third-party evidence. We also favored studies that significant though weak positive relationships between self-
sought to establish causal relationships, either by longitudinal esteem and academic performance in a large (N ϭ 3,001) Brit-
designs or by laboratory experimentation. ish sample. The correlations ranged from .10 to .13, and averaged
Given our restrictive criteria, relatively few studies survived .12. A somewhat stronger relationship was found by Bowles
from the initial set. Although many thousands of publications (1999), who showed that self-esteem correlated at .29 with stu-
refer to self-esteem, relatively few of them report studies that dents’ most recent semester grades in mathematics and En-
used highly rigorous methods to examine the causal impact of glish. Kugle, Clements, and Powell (1983) found that scores on
self-esteem on personal and social problems. These few gener- a reading achievement test correlated .18 with level of self-
ally represent vast amounts of work and deserve careful attention. esteem. However, when these authors controlled for ethnicity, the
We summarize them individually rather than meta-analytically. effect of self-esteem was no longer significant. Thus, these re-
cent studies also indicate that self-esteem goes with doing well
in school, although the relationship is weaker than one might
SCHOOL PERFORMANCE have expected in a society that values doing well in school.
As already noted, people with high self-esteem report their
The self-esteem movement has been especially influential in intelligence to be high, although there is no relationship be-
American schools, and part of the reason for this is the assump- tween self-esteem and scores on objective IQ tests (Gabriel et
tion that raising self-esteem will lead to improvements in chil- al., 1994). Simon and Simon (1975) found scores on self-esteem
dren’s academic performance. There are plausible reasons for to be correlated significantly (r ϭ .33) with scores on academic
thinking that high self-esteem will lead to good schoolwork. achievement tests and also with IQ test scores (thus contradict-
People with high self-esteem may set higher aspirations than ing the null result obtained by Gabriel et al.). In general,
people with low self-esteem. They may be more willing to per- though, there is very little evidence that self-esteem correlates
sist in the face of initial failure and less likely to succumb to with IQ or other academic abilities.
paralyzing feelings of incompetence and self-doubt. Learning, Self-esteem also predicts performance in minority and at-
by definition, involves acquiring information and skills that one risk samples. Ortiz and Volloff (1987) found significant corre-
does not initially have, and high self-esteem may help prevent lations between self-esteem and tests of IQ and school abilities,
the recognition of one’s initial incapability from producing a using a limited sample of Hispanic students in grades 3 to 6
sense that the cause is hopeless. High self-esteem may foster who had been nominated for testing as candidates for gifted
the confidence to tackle difficult problems and enable people to classes. Howerton, Enger, and Cobbs (1994) studied at-risk
derive satisfaction from progress and success. Black male students, and found that self-esteem predicted
grades and school achievement. Although Howerton et al. used
objective measures (school records) of achievement, a draw-
Correlational Findings back of the study is that the sample was very small (N ϭ 42).
Many studies have found that self-esteem is positively cor- Different authors have drawn very different conclusions
related with academic performance. In an early review, Wylie from correlations between self-esteem and school perfor-
(1979) concluded that the correlation between self-esteem and mance. Among the most optimistic was that of Zimmerman,
students’ grade point averages was about .30. She added that Copeland, Shope, and Dielman (1997): “Efforts either to pre-
similar or slightly stronger relationships had been reported be- vent and stabilize decreasing self-esteem or to build self-esteem

10 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



may have vital effects on . . . outcomes for youth” (p. 137). In as a way of establishing causal priority. Some of these studies have
their own study, Zimmerman et al. measured performance by also investigated whether third variables, such as socioeco-
asking students for general ratings of their grades (e.g., “Are nomic status or intelligence (IQ), could be responsible for the
your grades mostly A’s, mostly A’s and B’s . . . ?”), so their re- correlations between self-esteem and academic performance.
sults were vulnerable to subjective bias. In addition, the corre- An early and still well respected study by Bachman and
lations with self-esteem were very weak. Their results do not O’Malley (1977) used data from a nationwide longitudinal
seem to support their confidence that high self-esteem leads to study that tracked more than 1,600 young men from 1966,
better grades. when they were in 10th grade, up through 1974. All partici-
Other authors have inferred that significant correlations be- pants in this study completed a modified version of the Rosen-
tween self-esteem and school performance support the oppo- berg (1965) self-esteem scale at several points during this
site causal conclusion, namely, that good work in school leads period. Although Bachman and O’Malley found that self-es-
to high self-esteem. Bowles (1999) specifically measured self- teem correlated with school performance, their more sophisti-
esteem after the semester for which he obtained school grades, cated statistical tests (i.e., path analyses) did not point to any
so the positive correlation he found seems most consistent with causal role for self-esteem. Instead, they concluded that shared
the view that self-esteem is a result, not a cause, of doing well prior causes, including family background, ability, and early
in school. This conclusion was further supported by path analy- school performance, affect self-esteem and later educational at-
sis (a statistical technique for testing theories about complex tainment and were responsible for the correlation between the
chains of causes), which indicated that there was no direct two. They also concluded that occupational success caused
causal path from self-esteem to achievement. self-esteem to rise, whereas obtaining higher education had a
Still other researchers have concluded that the correlations negligible impact on self-esteem. Of all their findings, the one
between self-esteem and school performance, albeit signifi- that gives the most credence to the view that self-esteem is an
cant, are so small as to be not worth pursuing. Rubin, Dorle, important cause of successful outcomes is that self-esteem in
and Sandidge (1977) found that self-esteem was significantly high school predicted eventual level of educational attainment
correlated with all their measures of achievement, as well as (final degree earned), but in their path analysis the direct link
with teachers’ ratings of students’ behavior and performance. from high school self-esteem to later educational attainment
Yet statistical analysis showed that taking self-esteem into ac- was only .072. Its link to eventual occupational status was sim-
count barely improved the accuracy of predictions of achieve- ilar, at .061. These numbers indicate that the relationship is ex-
ment that were based on socioeconomic status and intelligence tremely weak, if it exists at all. Neither link was significant.
(IQ) alone. Rubin et al. wrote, “While these increases were sig- The findings of Bachman and O’Malley (1977) are important
nificant, their practical significance is negligible” (p. 506), and for several reasons. First, these researchers were perhaps the first
they concluded that the links between self-esteem and aca- to conduct such a thorough and sophisticated study of the impact
demic performance are based on “common underlying factors of self-esteem. Second, they plainly had hoped to find that self-
such as ability and background” (p. 503). esteem played a causal role, and they favored this hypothesis in
These and other findings generally point to a positive but their initial exposition. Indeed, they proposed that high self-es-
weak and ambiguous relationship between self-esteem and teem fosters high aspirations and persistence, which lead ulti-
school performance. Students with high self-esteem generally mately to better academic performance and career success.
have done somewhat better in school and on school achieve- Third, most subsequent work has generally confirmed their con-
ment tests than students with low self-esteem. The correla- clusions that self-esteem is a result rather than a cause, and that
tional findings do not indicate whether self-esteem is a cause or any correlations between self-esteem and achievement are likely
a result of school performance. They do, however, furnish one to be due to third variables such as family background.
possible explanation for the continuing belief that self-esteem Another milestone study was conducted by Maruyama, Ru-
may be beneficial for school performance. Teachers, parents, bin, and Kingsbury (1981). This research is an important com-
and others may observe that high self-esteem and good school plement to Bachman and O’Malley’s (1977) study because it
performance go together and infer that self-esteem plays a focused on a much younger age: Maruyama et al. followed a fi-
causal role. Unfortunately, impressions—even when backed up nal sample of more than 700 students from age 4 to age 15.
by significant correlations—do not justify causal conclusions. Achievement was measured using academic achievement tests,
We now turn to studies that have investigated whether there is a including the Stanford Achievement Test and, later, the Wide
causal relationship between self-esteem and academic perfor- Range Achievement Test, which emphasizes spelling, vocabu-
mance. lary, and arithmetic. Like Bachman and O’Malley, Maruyama
et al. found that self-esteem and academic achievement are cor-
related, but concluded that there is no causal relationship be-
Investigating Causality tween those variables. Instead, they argued that ability (IQ) and
Several studies have investigated the time course of the pos- social class are the underlying causal factors that affect the lev-
itive relation between self-esteem and academic performance, els of both self-esteem and academic achievement.

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 11



A follow-up by Bachman and O’Malley (1986) confirmed found, despite different methods and somewhat different nu-
their previous findings. In this follow-up, they sought to im- merical results.
prove their methodological rigor in several ways. One of these A slightly different conclusion was reached by Rosenberg,
was to confine analyses to White males in White-majority Schooler, and Schoenbach (1989). They analyzed data from the
schools. Although the exclusion of minorities is not considered Youth in Transition longitudinal study that was also the basis
methodologically desirable today, Bachman and O’Malley had for Bachman and O’Malley’s (1977) work. They used the 10th-
quite persuasive reasons for deciding that such inclusion might and 12th-grade data for nearly 1,900 boys, including measure-
have weakened the chance for self-esteem to emerge as caus- ments of achievement that relied on having the students report
ally significant. Specifically, in their original sample, African their grade point average in school. This sort of measure is in
American students scored lower than White students on achieve- the middle of the span of methodological rigor that we have
ment and ability tests but higher on self-esteem. Combining data outlined: It is not fully objective, but it is somewhat specific
from White and African American students could therefore ob- and verifiable. A slight tendency of people with high self-
scure a positive relationship between self-esteem and achieve- esteem to furnish self-flattering reports is to be expected, al-
ment. The authors also acknowledged that the low achievement though the scope for such inflation may be more limited than if
scores of African American students might indicate some lack respondents are asked a general self-rating question, such as
of validity of those measures for such a sample. Any lack of “How good are you at school?”
validity would make self-esteem look less effective than it ac- Rosenberg et al. (1989) did find significantly positive, although
tually is. weak, correlations between self-esteem and self-reported grades,
Despite their effort to increase the potential for their study r ϭ .24 in 10th grade and r ϭ .25 in 12th grade. Of greater in-
to demonstrate effects of self-esteem, Bachman and O’Malley terest were the findings across time. These supported the con-
(1986) found that global self-esteem had a negligible relation- clusion that self-esteem is the result of grades, rather than the
ship to eventual educational attainment. Family background cause. There was a modest causal relationship (.15) leading
(socioeconomic status), ability (IQ), and early school grades from grades to self-esteem, but the causal relationship leading
predicted eventual level of educational attainment, and self- from self-esteem to grades was only .08, which was not signifi-
esteem added little to the accuracy of prediction. Self-esteem cantly different from zero. In other words, there was no solid
was correlated with actual ability, although self-rated ability evidence that self-esteem had any effect on grades, despite the
was consistently inflated: People thought they were smarter fact that even a weak relationship would likely have been sig-
than they actually were. In short, these findings support the role nificant because Rosenberg et al. tested so many people.
of illusion in self-esteem, but they contradict the view that self- The view that self-esteem is an outcome rather than a cause
esteem causes long-term educational success. of good school performance was further supported in another
An article titled “Is There a Causal Relation Between Self- large and sophisticated study, by Skaalvik and Hagtvet (1990).
Concept and Academic Achievement?” was published by Pot- Their sample consisted of 600 Norwegian schoolchildren in
tebaum, Keith, and Ehly (1986). Their answer was a rather two cohorts, one in third grade (about age 9) and the other in
blunt negative: “The results suggest that there is no significant sixth grade at the start of the study. A second set of data was
causal relation between self-concept and academic achieve- obtained a year and a half later. Achievement was measured by
ment [in either direction], but rather that the observed relation teachers’ ratings, which furnish a good measure although erro-
is the result of one or more uncontrolled and unknown third neous perceptions by the teacher could affect a student’s self-
variables” (p. 142). A great deal of methodologically sophisti- esteem (e.g., if the teacher treats the student as a genius or dull-
cated work went into producing that conclusion. Pottebaum et ard). Skaalvik and Hagtvet found evidence that doing well in
al. used a sophisticated research design, testing a very large school one year led to higher self-esteem the next year,
sample of high school students (more than 23,000) in the 10th whereas high self-esteem did not lead to performing well in
grade and again in the 12th grade. Self-esteem in 10th grade school. In fact, high global self-esteem in grade 6 predicted
predicted academic achievement in 12th grade quite weakly (r ϭ lower academic achievement in grade 7.
.11). Conversely, academic achievement in 10th grade pre- Skaalvik and Hagtvet (1990) also measured students’ self-
dicted self-esteem in 12th grade only trivially better (r ϭ .12). concept of their academic ability. Although our focus is not on
The authors noted that a reciprocal causal relationship between domain-specific measures of self-esteem in this review, the
self-esteem and academic performance could produce the pat- findings are of interest. These researchers concluded that self-
tern of findings they obtained—but only if the two variables concept of ability mediates the relation between academic per-
cause each other with about the same amount of power, which formance and global self-esteem. Specifically, doing well in
seemed a priori implausible. Hence, Pottebaum et al. con- school leads to thinking of oneself as good at schoolwork,
cluded it is more likely that self-esteem and academic perfor- which in turn can boost global self-esteem. There was also
mance are both the result of a third variable (or set of some evidence for a causal influence of academic self-concept
variables). This conclusion is clearly consistent with what on school performance, which is thus one finding that suggests
Bachman and O’Malley (1977) and Maruyama et al. (1981) thinking well of oneself can lead to better schoolwork (al-

12 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



though this relationship involves thinking of oneself as good at come of academic achievement, but it does not appear to be a
schoolwork rather than as good overall). This causal influence cause or a mediating variable.
was found in some analyses but not others and was not strong. A nicely controlled field experiment by Forsyth and Kerr
Still, the fact that it was demonstrated at all helps dispel wor- (1999) provided converging evidence using an adult (college
ries that some kind of methodological or measurement problem student) sample. This investigation was conducted in connec-
renders it impossible to verify causal effects of self-concept. tion with a regular course. Students who received a C, D, or F
This in turn lends further credence to the conclusion that global on the first examination were targeted to receive weekly e-mail
self-esteem is not a cause of school performance. messages from the professor. Each message contained a review
question pertaining to that week’s assignment. In the control
condition, the review question was all that was included in the
Interventions e-mail. Students who were randomly assigned to two other
We found relatively little evidence on how self-esteem pro- groups, however, received either a message aimed at boosting
grams or other interventions affect self-esteem. Such interven- their sense of personal control and responsibility for their own
tions are practiced in many schools and other places, but it is performance or a message aimed at boosting and maintaining
common for them to target not only self-esteem but also study their positive sense of self-worth. These manipulations had no
skills, citizenship, conflict reduction, and other variables. Obvi- effect on the C students, but the D and F students who received
ously, if a program that attempts to boost self-esteem and im- the self-esteem boost performed significantly worse on subse-
prove study skills ends up producing an improvement in quent tests than the D and F students in the other conditions.
grades, it is hardly safe to conclude that self-esteem is respon- Forsyth and Kerr’s (1999) study is of interest because it in-
sible for the improvement. Furthermore, given that the studies volved full random assignment and because it found significant
investigating causality have not demonstrated that self-esteem differences as a function of treatments aimed at self-esteem.
has an impact on academic achievement, it seems likely that Unfortunately for the self-esteem movement, the findings sug-
any attempt to collect solid data on the impact of boosting self- gest that the intervention aimed at boosting self-esteem was
esteem would end up with null results, and the evaluators counterproductive in its impact on academic performance. We
would not be anxious to publish their results even if they could. have already noted some evidence linking high self-esteem to
An impressive review of research on such programs was subsequently poorer performance (e.g., Skaalvik & Hagtvet,
published by Scheirer and Kraut (1979). The title, “Increased 1990), although the preponderance of findings suggests that
Educational Achievement via Self-Concept Change,” sounds self-esteem is positively linked to academic achievement. Still,
promising with respect to the benefits of self-esteem, but the Forsyth and Kerr used an intervention rather than simple mea-
findings were not. Scheirer and Kraut covered evidence from surement of current self-esteem, and they aimed their interven-
both published and unpublished evaluations of school-based tion specifically at low-performing students. Their results are
interventions and programs, including Head Start, the Early consistent with the view that self-esteem is an important rein-
Training Project, and Upward Bound. By and large, the evalua- forcer for good academic performance and that supplying the
tions of these studies “generally failed to find an association reward indiscriminately (i.e., not linking it to good perfor-
between self-concept change and academic achievement” (Scheirer mance) may deflate its reward value. In plainer terms, students
& Kraut, 1979, p. 140). When there was an association, it may ordinarily work hard in order to be permitted to feel good
tended to be temporary (i.e., it was not maintained beyond the about themselves, and an intervention that encourages them to
end of the program), or it indicated that self-esteem was the re- feel good about themselves regardless of work may remove the
sult of academic achievement rather than the cause. Programs reason to work hard—resulting in poorer performance.
that targeted factors other than self-esteem (such as by encour-
aging parents to become involved in their children’s school-
work) seemed to get better results.
Scheirer and Kraut (1979) carefully considered a variety of Conclusion
factors that could have led to the general pattern of null results, The impact of self-esteem on school performance has been
including poor measurement, methodological problems, and studied more carefully and thoroughly than any other outcome
failure to implement interventions properly, among others. Yet we discuss in this review. We were able to find studies that used
as far as they could tell, these factors were not sufficient to ex- longitudinal designs and other methods that can address causa-
plain the broad pattern of results. For example, they noted that tion, used objective methods rather than relying on self-report,
some interventions that did not target self-esteem had produced and attempted to untangle self-esteem from other variables.
measurable gains in academic performance. Hence, they con- The results do not support the view that self-esteem has a
cluded that the most likely explanation of the disappointing re- strong causal effect on school achievement. Indeed, most of the
sults was that the basic theoretical hypothesis—namely, that evidence suggests that self-esteem has no impact on subse-
improving self-esteem will lead to better academic perfor- quent academic achievement. The few studies suggesting any
mance—was wrong. They said that self-esteem may be an out- positive causal impact of self-esteem generally found only tiny

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 13



effects. Some findings even point (again weakly) in the oppo- esteem is a result or a cause of good performance, but these
site direction, suggesting that high or artificially boosted self- have not yet been done.
esteem may detract from subsequent performance. A quite different approach to studying how self-esteem may
There were in fact some reasons to hope that self-esteem influence performance is to investigate the relationship in the
would be more potent. On a theoretical basis, self-esteem laboratory. Such studies typically measure self-esteem as a pre-
seemed likely to enhance academic strivings and persistence. existing trait and then investigate task performance in the labo-
Early empirical findings may also have encouraged the belief ratory. In most cases, researchers manipulate other variables
that self-esteem is helpful, because simple correlations be- such as initial failure or size of reward to investigate how they
tween self-esteem and academic performance have often been interact with self-esteem.
positive and significant (as noted by Wylie, 1979). Unfortu-
nately, those correlations appear to be due to processes other
than self-esteem causing good performance. First, good perfor- Performance Quality
mance in school may sometimes lead to higher self-esteem, in- Relatively few studies on the effect of self-esteem on perfor-
stead of the reverse. (Even that tendency is disappointingly mance quality have been published, and this leads us to suspect
weak, however.) Second, self-esteem overlaps with other vari- that the results are typically nonsignificant. We can point to ev-
ables, and when these are controlled in the statistical analyses, idence from our own laboratories. Wallace and Baumeister
the proportion of variance in performance accounted for by (2002) had students solve arithmetic problems under varying
self-esteem dwindles rapidly. levels of challenge and performance pressure. There was no
effect of self-esteem on any of the performance measures.
Baumeister, Heatherton, and Tice (1993) examined performance
at a video game that was presented as a test of nonverbal intel-
JOB AND TASK PERFORMANCE
ligence. Across multiple studies, there was essentially no effect
Applied to the world of work, the self-esteem hypothesis of self-esteem on performance. The control conditions (which
suggests that people who feel better about themselves perform indicate whether there is a link between self-esteem and perfor-
better. Early reviews of studies on the relationship between self- mance in the absence of special interventions) typically showed
esteem and work performance noted the high variability of the no difference in performance as a function of self-esteem,
reported size and nature of this relationship (Brockner, 1983; whereas ego threat in the form of critical feedback on a prior
Tharenou, 1979). Judge and Bono (2001) surveyed the results test caused people with high self-esteem to perform worse than
of 40 studies with more than 5,000 participants and found that those with low self-esteem.
most of them showed weak positive relationships. In some stud- In contrast, J.D. Campbell and Fairey (1985) found that
ies, self-esteem was measured with global indices, such as the people with high self-esteem performed better than those with
Rosenberg scale, whereas in others, it was measured more spe- low self-esteem on an anagram test when participants were first
cifically as organization-based self-esteem. Similarly, there were asked to write explanations for a hypothetical failure (there
differences in the way performance was measured. Some stud- were no self-esteem differences when participants first wrote
ies employed self-perception measures, whereas others used su- explanations for a hypothetical success or in a control condi-
pervisors’ ratings or objective measures. Whether the association tion). Thus, when the prospect of a possible failure is salient,
between self-esteem and performance was moderated by such higher levels of self-esteem may benefit task performance. In
differences in measurement was not reported. general, though, self-esteem seems to have little or no direct re-
Ultimately, the results regarding the link between self-esteem lationship to task performance.
and job performance seem to echo what has been found with
school performance: The simple search for correlations yields a
modest positive relationship, such that high self-esteem goes Persistence at Tasks
with better performance. However, the reported link between Conventional wisdom claims that persistence is a vital as-
self-esteem and job performance is highly variable, in contrast pect of performance (at both school and work). The research on
to the more consistent findings regarding school performance. A persistence has generally been consistent with the notion that a
likely explanation is that the relevance of self-esteem to work core characteristic of people with high self-esteem is their ten-
performance varies substantially because the demands and re- dency to persist in the face of failure (e.g., McFarlin, Baumeis-
wards of different occupations are highly variable. ter, & Blascovich, 1984; Perez, 1973; Shrauger & Sorman,
The most important point, however, is that correlational 1977, Study 1).
findings do not permit causal inferences. Self-esteem might The conventional wisdom notwithstanding, blind persis-
improve job performance. Then again, occupational success tence is not an ideal self-regulatory strategy; there is also value
might well boost self-esteem, whereas failure at one’s job may in knowing when to quit. Some studies have not found a corre-
deflate it. As in the case of school performance, time-lagged lation between greater persistence and high self-esteem, but
longitudinal studies are useful for determining whether self- these seeming failures to replicate suggest that individuals with

14 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



high self-esteem may make better use of cues telling them less rumination. More important, compared with participants
whether it is prudent to persist or withdraw. For example, Jan- with low self-esteem, those with high self-esteem showed
off-Bulman and Brickman (1982) and McFarlin (1985) told higher correlations between their ratings of perceived progress
some participants that some of the tasks that they would work and behavioral persistence across the 10 goals.
on did not have solutions. This information caused high self- Taken together, this research supports the notion that high
esteem participants to persist less (compared with the control self-esteem individuals utilize more adaptive self-regulatory
participants who did not receive this information), but did not strategies than low self-esteem individuals; these strategies
affect the persistence of low self-esteem participants. In a simi- may, in fact, be a factor in their higher levels of reported happi-
lar vein, Sandelands, Brockner, and Glynn (1988) advised ness and satisfaction (reviewed in a later section). The fact that
some participants that persistence was a wise strategy and oth- high self-esteem people have more functional responses to fail-
ers that it was a less prudent strategy. People with high self- ure may also convey slight advantages in performance, and
esteem persisted more in the former condition than in the latter, thus contribute to the (weak) associations between self-esteem
whereas those with low self-esteem were relatively unaffected and performance.
by the manipulation.
Thus, when people are given advice or cues that persistence
Conclusion
may not be a good strategy, those with high self-esteem persist
less than those with low self-esteem. Results were rather differ- High self-esteem has value in causing people to persist
ent, however, when McFarlin et al. (1984) directly told partici- longer in the face of failure, at least when there is no viable al-
pants what to do when they encountered a difficult problem ternative task or goal to pursue and when no cues suggest that
(quit or persist). In this case, low self-esteem participants were persistence is not a good strategy. When there is an alternative
responsive to the instructions, whereas high self-esteem partic- goal or information that persistence may be a poor strategy,
ipants were not. Taken together, these studies suggest that peo- high self-esteem is also associated with knowing when to quit.
ple with high self-esteem make better use of situational cues in Thus, in performance contexts, high self-esteem people appear
deciding for themselves the appropriate course of action, but to use better self-regulation strategies than low self-esteem
that people with low self-esteem may be more responsive to di- people.
rections that simply tell them what to do. It is difficult to draw firm causal conclusions about self-
Although these experiments are interesting, in the real esteem and other aspects of job and task performance. Overall,
world individuals are rarely (if ever) provided with this kind of there are weak positive correlations between job performance
information. Indeed, persistence is a ubiquitous phenomenon and self-esteem, but these may be due in whole or in part either
precisely because people are not given such direct advice. The to successful performance improving self-esteem or to self-
experiments also differ from natural conditions in that experi- report biases. There is no strong evidence indicating specifi-
mental participants experience only a single instance of failure, cally that high self-esteem leads to improved performance on the
and there are no opportunities to pursue alternative goals or job. The links between self-esteem and job performance de-
tasks (Bandura, 1989). Under these conditions, persistence at serve more systematic and careful study, using objective mea-
the failed task seems to be a reasonable strategy. In contrast, if sures and longitudinal designs. However, if high self-esteem
one has experienced multiple failures on a task and, as is typi- consistently produced better performance in laboratory tasks,
cally the case outside the laboratory, there are opportunities to this would be well established by now, and the lack of such ev-
pursue alternative goals, it seems more adaptive to abandon the idence suggests to us that self-esteem has little impact on task
original task in favor of an alternative. performance.
Di Paula and Campbell (2002) recently examined the rela-
tionship between level of self-esteem and knowing when to INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS
quit. First, they conducted a laboratory experiment in which
they manipulated the degree of failure (a single, initial failure Another major sphere of life activity is interpersonal rela-
or three instances of failure) and the availability of an alterna- tions. The apparent failure of self-esteem to contribute directly
tive goal. Compared with low self-esteem participants, high to improvements in academic and job performance would eas-
self-esteem participants persisted more after a single failure, ily be offset if self-esteem helped people to get along better
but less after repeated failure when an alternative was avail- with others.
able. In a second correlational study, participants enumerated It is certainly plausible that high self-esteem would improve
10 specific goals at the beginning of an academic year and at interpersonal relations. People with high self-esteem claim to
the end of the year indicated, for each goal, their perceived be more popular than people with low self-esteem (Battistich,
progress and behavioral persistence, as well as how much they Solomon, & Delucchi, 1993), although as already noted, self-
had ruminated about the goal. Self-esteem was positively cor- reports are not reliable guides to objective realities. High
related with achieving more goals, more satisfaction with self-esteem might well make a person more likable insofar as
progress toward goals, more behavioral pursuit of goals, and people may prefer to interact with confident, enterprising indi-

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 15



viduals and to avoid interacting with people who suffer from esteem were more often found in the conventional and peer-
self-doubts and insecurities. The reverse causal relationship is oriented categories. Unfortunately, because these findings were
also quite plausible, of course, and indeed it forms the center- based on students’ self-rated popularity rather than peer rat-
piece of the sociometer theory of self-esteem put forward by ings, they may reflect the tendency of people with high self-
Leary and his colleagues (Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, esteem to rate themselves favorably. Without objective mea-
1995; see also Leary & Baumeister, 2000; Leary & Downs, sures, it is hard to know whether some students were actually
1995). According to this view, self-esteem operates as an inter- more popular or merely believed themselves to be so.
nal measure of one’s interpersonal appeal and success. Popu- A somewhat better approach was taken by Dolcini and
larity would therefore cause self-esteem to rise, whereas social Adler (1994), who asked a subsample of eighth graders to indi-
rejection would cause it to drop. It is also plausible that high cate which peer group, or “crowd,” every other student in the
self-esteem elicits dislike, insofar as people reject conceited or eighth grade belonged to, and then obtained self-esteem scores
arrogant individuals. from all the students directly. Global self-esteem did not differ
among the different crowds, although there were some effects
for domain-specific self-esteem. For example, the academically
Friendship Patterns and Interpersonal Interactions oriented “smart” crowd scored higher than the jocks on aca-
As already noted, people with high self-esteem claim to be demic self-esteem, and the athletic crowd scored higher than
especially popular (Battistich et al., 1993). They also rate their the bookworms on athletic self-esteem.
friendships as being of higher quality compared with people Adams, Ryan, Ketsetzis, and Keating (2000) used teachers’
with low self-esteem (Keefe & Berndt, 1996). People low in ratings as the basis for evaluating the interpersonal behavior and
self-esteem report more negative, aversive social interactions, social desirability of 300 schoolchildren in grades 4 and 7 in
more stressful life events, and less social support than people Ontario, Canada. Two main types of desirable behavior were the
high in self-esteem (Lakey, Tardiff, & Drew, 1994). In the focus of the ratings: peer sociability, which included popularity
workplace, people with high self-esteem claim to get along bet- and good relationships, and desirable classroom behavior,
ter with their co-workers (although not with their supervisors), which included following rules and behaving properly in class.
compared with people with low self-esteem (Frone, 2000). Neither popularity nor classroom behavior varied as a function
Thus, self-reports indicate that the social lives of people with of self-esteem. Several background factors and child character-
high self-esteem are far better, richer, and more satisfying than istics did successfully predict these outcomes, though (e.g., high
the lives of people with low self-esteem. But are these claims scores on assertiveness were correlated with higher popularity
justified? but also higher levels of rule breaking in class). Thus, the null
In a large sociometric study by Bishop and Inderbitzen findings for self-esteem do not appear to reflect a general failure
(1995), 542 ninth-grade students nominated their most-liked of measurement or a high amount of random fluctuation. Self-
and least-liked peers. On the basis of these votes, each person esteem did show some correlations with some of the back-
was put into one of five categories along a span of degree of ground variables, such as family cohesion, but even though
popularity (i.e., popular, average, controversial, neglected, re- these background variables predicted popularity and classroom
jected). Perhaps surprisingly, these categories showed no corre- behavior, self-esteem failed both as a possible mediator and as
lation with self-esteem whatsoever. This finding contradicts an independent predictor of the outcomes. The authors con-
both the view that high self-esteem is socially appealing and the cluded glumly that their findings “call into question whether
theory that self-esteem results from peer approval. One finding self-esteem is a potential causal agent or even a correlate of in-
that offered minimal support for the general self-esteem hypoth- terpersonal relations or classroom citizenship” (p. 247).
esis was that people who had no reciprocal friendships at all ex- A smattering of methodologically sound studies with adult
hibited lower self-esteem than people who had at least one. college students has examined the social interaction patterns of
Beyond one reciprocal friendship, however, self-esteem ap- people high in self-esteem. An important study by Buhrmester,
peared to be irrelevant to friendship status and popularity. Furman, Wittenberg, and Reis (1988) examined a variety of in-
Glendinning and Inglis (1999) categorized students into terpersonal behaviors. All the students were rated both by them-
four distinct social groups on the basis of their self-reported at- selves and by their roommates, so the method offered a valuable
titudes about peer relations and their own popularity and then opportunity to compare subjective and external perspectives. As
related group membership to the students’ self-esteem levels. usual, people high in self-esteem rated themselves as signifi-
The social groups were called “peer oriented” (i.e., high status, cantly better than other people on all interpersonal skills: They
popular with peers), “conventional” (i.e., middle status, accept- claimed to be substantially better at initiating relationships (r ϭ
ing of authority), “socially isolated” (i.e., hard to make and .63), better at disclosing things about themselves (r ϭ .41), bet-
keep friends), and “disaffected” (i.e., troublesome, disrespect- ter at asserting themselves in connection with objectionable be-
ful of authority). Results showed that adolescents with low haviors by others (r ϭ .40), better at providing emotional
self-esteem were relatively more common in the socially iso- support to others (r ϭ .30), and significantly better even at man-
lated and disaffected categories, whereas those with high self- aging interpersonal conflicts (r ϭ .20).

16 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



The roommates’ ratings told a very different story, however. (1990). After a 15-min get-acquainted conversation, people es-
For four of the five interpersonal skills, the correlation between timated how their partner and an observer would evaluate them
self-rated self-esteem and roommate-rated skill fell short of and rated how favorably they evaluated their partner. Ratings
significance, ranging from .01 for conflict management to .15 were also obtained from uninvolved observers. People with
for assertion in the face of objectionable behaviors. In the case high self-esteem estimated that their partners and observers
of initiating new social contacts and friendships, the link to would rate them more positively than people with low self-
self-esteem (r ϭ .38) remained significant but was substan- esteem, but there was no difference in the actual ratings by
tially lower than the link between self-esteem and self-rated partners or by observers. As in the study by Brockner and
skill at making new friends. A troublesome aspect of this Lloyd (1986), people high in self-esteem estimated quite accu-
study’s findings was that roommate-rated self-esteem corre- rately how much their partners liked them (low self-esteem
lated better than self-rated self-esteem with roommate-rated people underestimated how much their partners liked them).
social skills, and the correlations between roommate-rated self- However, because the observers rated everyone more harshly
esteem and roommate-rated interpersonal skills were quite than did interaction partners, low self-esteem people were
similar to the correlations between self-rated self-esteem and more accurate in their estimates of the observers’ ratings.
self-rated interpersonal skills. Self-esteem almost certainly has A more complex laboratory investigation of self-esteem and
to be more accurate when reported by the self than when esti- interpersonal liking was recently published by Heatherton and
mated by others, and so these findings raise the worrisome pos- Vohs (2000). They reasoned that the null findings of Brockner
sibility that the correlations were due to some kind of response and Lloyd (1986) might have been due in part to the relatively
bias that resulted in answers to questions about self-esteem be- neutral context, so they introduced a manipulation of ego
ing similar to answers to questions about interpersonal skills. threat. Specifically, prior to the conversational interaction, half
The findings of Buhrmester et al. (1988) thus suggest that of the participants took a difficult intellectual test and received
people high in self-esteem regard themselves as having an im- esteem-threatening feedback that they had performed far worse
pressive range of superior social skills, but that these skills are than their peers. The other participants took a neutral version of
not readily discerned or confirmed by others. By and large, the same test, which was labeled as a pilot task, and received
roommates did not find their high self-esteem roommates to be no feedback. Then all participants had a structured, 20-min
any more socially skilled than their low self-esteem room- conversation with a naive participant involving topics of low,
mates. The only significant exception involved skill in initiat- medium, and high intimacy. Finally, the participants rated how
ing new relationships and interactions. This does seem to be much they liked each other.
one sphere in which confidence could come into play: People Heatherton and Vohs’s (2000) results showed that self-esteem
who think that they are desirable and attractive might well be interacted with ego threat. In the control condition, in which
willing to strike up conversations with strangers, possibly be- there was no blow to anyone’s pride or sense of competence,
cause they do not expect rejection. In contrast, people with low people were liked equally regardless of their level of self-esteem.
self-esteem might shy away from initiating such contacts. In that respect, the results replicated the findings of Brockner
Interpersonal interactions were studied in the laboratory by and Lloyd (1986) and J.D. Campbell and Fehr (1990). In the
Brockner and Lloyd (1986). All subjects first rated their self- ego-threat condition, however, differences did emerge. People
esteem and then had a 10-min “get acquainted” conversation with high self-esteem were given lower ratings than people
with a member of the opposite sex. Care was taken to ensure with low self-esteem. These findings directly contradict the
that conversational partners did not know each other prior to view that high self-esteem leads to better interpersonal liking.
the session. Afterward, they answered questions about their im- (They also contradict the so-called buffer hypothesis, which
pressions of each other. In addition to these peer ratings, self- holds that people with high self-esteem cope better with stress
ratings of likability were obtained. People with high self-es- and adversity. We discuss this hypothesis further in the section
teem estimated that their partners had liked them much more on Coping and Depression.) Additional evidence suggested
than people with low self-esteem, but partners’ actual ratings that the decreased liking for people with high self-esteem in the
did not show even a hint of this correlation. It is also notewor- ego-threat condition compared with the control condition was
thy that people with low rather than high self-esteem appear to due to their being perceived as antagonistic. In contrast, and
have been responsible for the discrepancy between self-ratings perhaps counterintuitively, low self-esteem people were liked
and partner ratings: People low in self-esteem estimated that significantly more in the ego-threat condition than in the con-
their partners liked them much less than the partners actually trol condition.
indicated, whereas people high in self-esteem estimated their These findings were corroborated by Vohs and Heatherton
partners’ ratings quite accurately. These results dovetail with (in press) in a naturalistic study of 372 college men and women
those of Buhrmester et al. (1988): High self-esteem makes for who were rated by their peers. Participants’ global self-esteem
thinking oneself popular and likable, but in reality people with was assessed during the spring of their senior year in high
high and low self-esteem are equally likable. school and then again midway through their 1st year at an Ivy
Similar findings were reported by J.D. Campbell and Fehr League college. Those whose self-esteem dropped substan-

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 17



tially (i.e., by 1 SD), presumably because the move to college that couples with low self-esteem were more likely than cou-
shook their positive sense of self, were placed in the ego-threat ples with high self-esteem to break up over a 1-month period
group, and compared with students whose self-esteem did not (S.S. Hendrick, Hendrick, & Adler, 1988). Data on love styles
drop. This study supported Heatherton and Vohs’s (2000) pre- and self-esteem support this finding, showing that low self-
vious studies in showing that high self-esteem men and women esteem is related to feelings of manic love, which is character-
who were threatened were liked least by their peers. Once ized by extreme feelings of both joy and anguish over the love
again, being seen as antagonistic mediated the effect. object (W.K. Campbell, Foster, & Finkel, 2002). High self-
Vohs and Heatherton (2001) looked into possible mecha- esteem is related to passionate, erotic love, which is marked by
nisms underlying these results. They found that high and low the escalation of erotic feelings for the love object. These find-
self-esteem people think about themselves differently after ings are consistent with other studies showing that, compared
threat, such that high self-esteem people become more inde- with people with high self-esteem, those with low self-esteem
pendent and less interdependent (i.e., they emphasize self-reli- experience more instances of unrequited love (Dion & Dion,
ance and believe that they really do not need other people), 1975) and more intense feelings of love for others (C. Hendrick
whereas the opposite is true for low self-esteem people (i.e., & Hendrick, 1986).
they emphasize interpersonal relations, even at the expense of Several findings indicate that relationship behavior differs
the self). In the absence of threat, however, high and low self- as a function of self-esteem. Murray, Rose, Bellavia, Holmes,
esteem people show no differences in concern for the self ver- and Kusche (2002) found that people low in self-esteem en-
sus interpersonal relations. Further, Vohs and Heatherton found gage in a variety of potentially destructive behaviors. They tend
that it is seeing the self as separate versus connected to others to distrust their partners’ expressions of love and support, and
that drives differences in likability and personality perceptions so they act as though they are constantly expecting their part-
between high and low self-esteem people who have experi- ners to reject and abandon them. Thus far, however, these patterns
enced an ego threat. have not translated into any evidence that the relationships are
Converging evidence was recently provided by Bonanno, actually more likely to dissolve.
Field, Kovacevic, and Kaltman (2002). They found that un- Thus, despite the relationship problems caused by low self-
trained observers disliked people prone to self-enhancement. esteem, relationships are no more likely to break up if a partner
Among the same group of participants, the size of the tendency has low self-esteem than if a partner has high self-esteem. Pos-
toward self-enhancement was associated with the self-reported sibly the reason for this is that high self-esteem leads to rela-
ability to cope with stress and trauma (see the section on Cop- tionship problems, too. Rusbult, Morrow, and Johnson (1987)
ing and Depression). Put another way, holding an inflated view examined four types of responses to problems within close rela-
of themselves helped people feel good and recover from tionships, and found that self-esteem produced the largest dif-
trauma, but also tended to alienate others. ference in the active-destructive (“exit”) category of responses.
Other evidence, however, suggests that people with high People with high self-esteem were significantly more likely
self-esteem are liked better if certain conditions are met. Joiner than others to respond to problems and conflicts by deciding to
et al. (1992) conducted a 5-week study of same-gender room- leave the relationship, seeking other partners, and engaging in
mates, measuring roommates’ liking using a modified version other behaviors that would actively contribute to the deteriora-
of the Rosenberg scale. Thus, if roommates rated people as tion of the relationship. These results were based on responses
they rated themselves, people low in self-esteem would appear to hypothetical scenarios, which share many of the drawbacks
to be disliked, and people with high self-esteem would appear of self-report measures. However, as the authors noted, it seems
to be liked. This procedure therefore made it extra likely that unlikely that their findings can be attributed to a simple re-
people with high self-esteem would emerge as well liked. Even sponse bias because people with high self-esteem were admit-
so, people with low self-esteem were liked less than others ting to more undesirable, rather than desirable, behaviors.
only if they were male, depressed, and prone to reassurance Shackelford (2001) found that self-esteem was intertwined
seeking (an annoying pattern of interpersonal tactics designed with a variety of patterns in marriage, although he did not pro-
to elicit positive, supportive comments from others). The re- vide evidence as to whether high self-esteem affects the dura-
sults for females, nondepressed individuals, and other partici- bility of marriages. Spouses showed similar levels of self-
pants did not show greater dislike or disparagement of people esteem, with global self-esteem of spouses correlating at .23
with low self-esteem than people with high self-esteem. and physical self-esteem (including self-rated attractiveness)
correlating fairly strongly at .53. Significantly, Shackelford re-
garded self-esteem as an outcome rather than a cause of marital
Romantic and Intimate Relationships interactions, although his data were correlational. Wives’ fidel-
The role of self-esteem in romantic relationships has re- ity was the strongest predictor of husbands’ self-esteem. This
ceived fairly little attention. In particular, little is known about might indicate that men with high self-esteem cause their wives
whether self-esteem predicts the durability of romantic rela- to remain faithful, or—as Shackelford speculated—that cuck-
tionships. One study with a very small sample (N ϭ 30) found olded husbands experience a loss of self-esteem.

18 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



Most important, women complained more about husbands initiative and criticizing a group would seemingly require hav-
with low than with high self-esteem. Low self-esteem men ing some confidence in one’s own views, and sure enough, peo-
were derided by their wives as jealous, possessive, inconsider- ple with high self-esteem were rated by their peers as more
ate, moody, prone to abuse alcohol, and emotionally con- willing and more likely to do those things. It is in fact surpris-
stricted. Again, the direction of causality is difficult to ing that the effect was so small.
determine. Possibly, husbands’ low self-esteem elicits negative Group performance was also investigated in a longitudinal
perceptions among wives. Conversely, being disrespected or study by Paulhus (1998). He had 4-person and 5-person groups
despised by his wife may lower a man’s self-esteem. Yet an- meet once per week for 7 weeks to discuss readings for their
other possibility is that having a variety of bad traits leads both psychology class. Group members rated each other after the
to low self-esteem and to being disrespected by one’s wife. first and last weeks. Self-enhancement, defined as rating one-
Meanwhile, the self-esteem of wives was unrelated to their self more favorably than group members did, was positively
husbands’ complaints about them, except that husbands who correlated with narcissism at the end of the study (whereas if
criticized or insulted their wives’ appearance were generally anything, narcissists came across as fairly modest at the initial
married to wives with low self-esteem, and indeed Shackelford assessment). In contrast, self-esteem showed a weak, but posi-
(2001) found that this was the most consistent predictor of low tive correlation with self-enhancement at both times. The most
self-esteem among wives. relevant outcome variable, however, was the rating of each in-
dividual’s contribution to group performance. People with high
self-esteem were rated more positively than people with low
Group Behavior and Leadership self-esteem at both times (r ϭ .25 and r ϭ .28, respectively),
Behavior in groups is an important complement to behavior indicating good contribution to the group’s work. The hetero-
in intimate dyadic relationships. We found relatively little work geneity of high self-esteem was evident, however, in the ratings
that shows objective behavioral effects of self-esteem in group of narcissists. Initially, narcissists were rated quite positively as
settings. One notable exception is an impressive longitudinal contributing to the group, but by the end of the 7th week, the
study by LePine and Van Dyne (1998). These researchers com- favorable impression of narcissists had disappeared completely
piled a broad sample of work groups, consisting in total of (r ϭ Ϫ.01). In a second study, similar results were found, and
nearly 600 employees in 21 different organizations. They fol- in addition, narcissists went from generally positive peer rat-
lowed the groups for 6 months and obtained peer ratings of the ings initially to being rated as cold, arrogant, inclined to brag,
behavior of each participant. The main variable of interest was prone to overestimate self, and hostile by the end of the study.
“voice behavior,” defined as the willingness to speak within the The second study also solicited ratings by friends prior to
group, criticizing its operation or proposing alternative routes of the series of group meetings, which allowed Paulhus (1998) to
action. Voice behavior is vital to an organization’s long-term calculate a second, pretest, measure of self-enhancement, that
success, because innovation depends on it, as do the group’s is, each person’s tendency to rate himself or herself more favor-
chances for stopping itself from proceeding down a destructive ably than friends did. The pattern of ratings for participants
path (as in “groupthink”; Janis, 1982). Because speaking up and with high scores on this pretest measure of self-enhancement
criticizing the group require initiative and a willingness to devi- was quite similar to the pattern found for narcissists—peers’
ate from the group’s apparent consensus, the authors predicted ratings of their contribution to the group were significantly
that high self-esteem would lead to greater voice behavior. positive initially, but this positive impression was gone in the
This prediction was confirmed, although the effect was only final ratings. The ratings at the end of the study depicted self-
marginally significant. Across the 6-month period, LePine and enhancers as confident, but cold, arrogant, prone to brag, de-
Van Dyne (1998) found that high self-esteem led to more voice fensive, and hostile.
behavior, though it accounted for only 1% of the differences Leadership is another important aspect of group behavior,
between people on that dimension. Moreover, it was indeed and most experts would say that the causes and determinants of
people high in self-esteem who were most willing to speak out. good leadership form a set of questions that psychology has not
An additional 3% of the variance in voice behavior was ac- yet managed to answer to everyone’s satisfaction. Intuition
counted for by interactions of self-esteem with other variables, suggests that leadership ought to correlate with self-esteem, al-
especially group size. As one might expect, as groups became though the causal arrow could point in either direction. High
larger, fewer people were willing to speak out against the con- self-esteem might give a person the confidence and initiative to
sensus or criticize the group, but this pattern of declining initia- take charge of a group, make decisions under pressure or un-
tive was less pronounced for people high in self-esteem than certainty, and expect that others will do his or her bidding. But
for those low in self-esteem. Put another way, people with high it is also plausible that becoming a leader engenders a sense of
self-esteem were less intimidated by the prospect of speaking personal superiority and brings about a rise in self-esteem. Cer-
out in a large group. tainly, the careers of many exceptional leaders in history sug-
Thus, high self-esteem was found to have one benefit, and it gest that they must have had some high degree of self-
was a benefit that fits well with theoretical assumptions. Taking confidence in order to make it to the top and that, conversely,

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 19



over time their positions of power encouraged them to become In a meta-analysis, Aberson et al. (2000) found that people
narcissistic and sometimes megalomaniacal (Baumeister, 1989). high in self-esteem rate groups to which they belong more fa-
An impressive study of leadership among military cadets vorably than they rate groups to which they do not belong. Peo-
was recently published by Chemers, Watson, and May (2000). ple low in self-esteem show no such difference. Recent work
The cadets were followed over time, including during a special on social categorization suggests a simple process can account
summer program devoted to leadership training. The measures for this effect. When people predict the attributes of their in-
included ratings by peers and by military science professors, as groups, they rely heavily on their own self-concepts, but when
well as objective performance on two leadership tasks and two they predict the attributes of out-groups, they do not engage in
nonleadership tasks (rifle marksmanship and land navigation). such self-anchoring (or projection) (Cadinu & Rothbart, 1996;
Simple correlational analyses showed some significant effects Clement & Krueger, 2002). Because positive attributes out-
of self-esteem. It predicted peer ratings, professors’ ratings, number negative ones in most people’s self-concepts, projec-
and performance on the second (though not the first) leadership tions to in-groups yield positive outcomes. By not being subject
exercise, as well as performance on the two control nonleader- to projection, descriptions of out-groups remain more neutral.
ship tasks. The process of differential projection also explains why in-
Self-esteem, optimism, and leadership efficacy (feelings of group bias typically reflects in-group favoritism rather than
being a good leader) proved to be intercorrelated, however, so out-group derogation (Brewer & Kramer, 1985).
the authors conducted more rigorous statistical analyses that
disentangled the effects of these variables. In these analyses,
global self-esteem did not have a significant correlation with Conclusion
leadership ratings obtained either from the professors or from Popular wisdom in the age of self-esteem holds that loving
the cadet peers. Self-esteem also failed to yield a significant oneself is a prerequisite for loving others (e.g., Crooks & Baur,
contribution to performance on the leadership exercises (as did 1999). Efforts to boost self-esteem in schools, homes, and else-
optimism), but leadership efficacy succeeded. The fact that the where would be well justified if they resulted in significant im-
effects of self-esteem disappeared in these more sophisticated provements in how people got along with one another.
analyses indicates that self-esteem overlapped with other fac- The evidence suggests that the superior social skills and in-
tors (e.g., leadership efficacy) that may have taken precedence terpersonal successes of people with high self-esteem exist
in predicting the outcome measures assessed. Chemers et al. mainly in their own minds. People with high self-esteem claim
found a unique association between self-esteem and perfor- to be more popular and socially skilled than others, but objec-
mance only on the land navigation exercise. High self-esteem tive measures generally fail to confirm this and in some cases
might help people avoid getting lost (or, conversely, finding point in the opposite direction. When rated by peers, teachers,
one’s way home might raise self-esteem). or laboratory interaction partners, people with high self-esteem
Group behavior also involves intergroup relations. In gen- are not liked any better than people with low self-esteem, and
eral, people favor their own groups in thought and deed. They following a blow to their pride they may become antagonistic
prefer to assign greater rewards to members of their own group and elicit negative reactions. People who have elevated or in-
than to out-groups, they rate their own group more favorably flated views of themselves tend to alienate others.
than out-groups, and they tend to direct prejudice and discrimi- The sociometer model proposed by Leary and his colleagues
nation toward out-groups. Early theorizing suggested that such (Leary et al., 1995) suggests that the level of self-esteem should
in-group favoritism is stronger among people with low self- be an outcome of interpersonal successes and failures. This view
esteem than among those with high self-esteem (e.g., Ehrlich, raises a very plausible alternative explanation for any findings
1973). It seemed plausible that people low in self-esteem are that might link high self-esteem to social success. But as al-
most inclined to boost themselves by means of disparaging and ready noted, there are relatively few such findings. Bishop and
discriminating against members of other groups. Indeed, the Inderbitzen (1995) found that children without any friends
opportunity to discriminate against a member of a negatively tended to have low self-esteem, and it seems quite plausible
stereotyped group can bolster self-esteem (Fein & Spencer, 1997). that this lack of friends was a cause rather than a result of low
Crocker et al. (1987) pointed out, however, that one cannot self-esteem.
infer the presence of prejudice when people with low self- The results of studies on group behavior do not provide a
esteem give low ratings to out-groups. People with low self- ringing endorsement of the importance of self-esteem. High
esteem seem generally negative about many events and people, self-esteem does not appear to have much to contribute to lead-
including themselves. A more appropriate measure of bias is ership, especially after controlling for other variables. High
the difference between how one rates oneself or one’s own group self-esteem appears to foster a small but significant tendency
versus how one rates the out-group. By that measure, Crocker toward greater voice behavior in work groups. This tendency to
et al. found that prejudice was stronger among people with speak up may also be responsible for people with high self-
high rather than low self-esteem (see also Crocker & Luhtanen, esteem receiving somewhat higher ratings for contributing to
1990). the group, compared with people with low self-esteem. People

20 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



with high self-esteem also generally show greater bias in favor insofar as the aggressive and nonaggressive people in the high
of their own groups, which may be beneficial for the in-group self-esteem category would cancel each other out.
but may also produce greater discrimination and conflict be-
tween groups.
Self-esteem does appear to have a variety of interpersonal Aggression
consequences. People with low self-esteem differ from those Among children, bullying is an important form of aggres-
with high self-esteem in how they conduct their interpersonal sion. The traditional view that bullies have low self-esteem has
relationships and how they choose and pursue social goals. recently come under attack. Olweus (1990, 1994) was one of
Still, these differences do not appear to translate into substan- the first to dispute the notion that bullies suffer from insecuri-
tially different relationship outcomes. ties and self-doubts that underlie a tough exterior. Although Ol-
The most promising results involve social initiative. The weus did not measure self-esteem directly, he did show that
tendency to initiate interpersonal contacts and relationships (as bullies reported less anxiety and were more sure of themselves
rated by roommates) was the only interpersonal skill that dif- than other children. Analyzing self-reports of bullying behavior
ferentiated participants with high and low-esteem in the study from more than a thousand Australian schoolchildren, Slee and
by Buhrmester et al. (1988). In groups, people with high self- Rigby (1993) found no correlation between bullying and self-
esteem are more willing than those with low self-esteem to esteem. Clearly, though, self-reports of bullying are suspect,
speak up to criticize the group or propose directions for action. insofar as people who score high on self-esteem generally
Likewise, people high in self-esteem take more initiative in ex- claim to perform a broad range of socially desirable behaviors
tricating themselves from unhappy relationships (Rusbult et al., more often than other people do (and indeed they claimed to
1987). At present the evidence is sparse, but both theoretical perform more prosocial behavior in this sample, too).
considerations and the few available findings suggest that self- Reliable information about bullying requires confirmation
esteem may have value in promoting initiative. from external sources, preferably peers. Such data were ob-
Self-esteem per se may not be the best variable for explor- tained by Salmivalli, Kaukiainen, Kaistaniemi, and Lagerspetz
ing interpersonal processes. Narcissists (many of whom have (1999), who had a sample of more than 300 Finnish adoles-
high self-esteem) exhibit a variety of interpersonally problem- cents (ages 14 and 15) fill out trait measures, including mea-
atic and alienating behaviors. Some depressed people (a group sures of self-esteem and defensive egotism, and rate all their
that includes some people with low self-esteem) constantly classmates on a variety of behavioral and trait measures. In ad-
seek interpersonal reassurance and alienate others for different dition to calculating correlations between self-esteem ratings
reasons. and other measures, Salmivalli et al. used the measures of self-
rated and peer-rated self-esteem to categorize the participants
according to whether they were best characterized as having
AGGRESSION, VIOLENCE, DELINQUENCY, AND
defensive high self-esteem, genuine high self-esteem, low self-
ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR
esteem, a tendency to belittle themselves, or humble pride. By
For decades, psychologists believed that low self-esteem using these categories, the authors were able to allow for the
was an important cause of aggression. This view appears to possible heterogeneity of high self-esteem.
have emerged from clinical impressions rather than any single The correlation between each person’s self-esteem and the
theoretical formulation or line of empirical evidence. It was classmates’ ratings of that person as prone to bully people was
challenged by Baumeister et al. (1996), who reviewed assorted not significant. However, people categorized as having defen-
bodies of findings and concluded that perpetrators of aggressive high self-esteem (characterized by very high scores on de-
sion generally hold favorable and perhaps even inflated views fensive egotism along with above-average scores on self-rated
of themselves. They proposed that aggression results from and peer-rated self-esteem) were significantly more likely than
what they called “threatened egotism,” namely, a positive view others to be named by peers as bullies. Salmivalli et al. (1999)
of self that is questioned or attacked by other people. Two noted that this finding confirmed both the heterogeneity of high
points need to be noted. First, that review did not contain labo- self-esteem and the threatened-egotism hypothesis put forward
ratory experiments linking measured self-esteem to measured by Baumeister et al. (1996). Of further interest was that the cat-
aggression, and indeed many of the findings about violent egory of defensive high self-esteem covered not only the bul-
groups (such as incarcerated murderers) relied on interviews lies themselves but their cronies, too. People in this category
and impressions rather than standard measures of self-esteem. were rated by peers as prone to assist bullies in their victimiza-
Second, Baumeister et al. firmly embraced the notion of the tion of others, such as by joining in once a bully had begun at-
heterogeneity of high self-esteem. They noted that many peo- tacking someone, or by catching and holding the victim so the
ple high in self-esteem are not aggressive, even though others bully could continue tormenting him or her. People with defen-
are highly aggressive. If that view is correct, then carefully sive high self-esteem were also rated as more likely than others
controlled and systematic studies attempting to measure both to reinforce bullying, such as by coming over to watch the bul-
self-esteem and aggression might generally find null results, lying, shouting out encouragement to the bully, laughing at the

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 21



spectacle, and making approving comments either to the bully Self-reported violence is a problematic measure, however.
or to other bystanders. Murphy et al. (2001) addressed this problem by obtaining re-
The heterogeneity of high self-esteem was confirmed by ports from the spouses and partners of the domestic offenders
Salmivalli et al. (1999) in another way. Adolescents with genu- during the 6 months after the therapy. These data alone meet
ine (as opposed to defensive) high self-esteem were rated by the standard of objectively confirming behavioral outcomes,
their peers as significantly more likely than others to defend the and they provide no confirmation at all of the benefits of boost-
victims of bullying. Upon reflection, this finding is not surpris- ing self-esteem. There was no significant correlation between
ing, because coming to the aid of a victim requires some degree men’s self-esteem or change in self-esteem and their partner-
of confidence. One might combine all these findings to suggest reported abusive behavior, and if anything the trend was in the
that high self-esteem appears to support initiative, whether for wrong direction: Higher post-therapy self-esteem and greater
good or ill: People with high (defensive) self-esteem were increases in self-esteem from the beginning to the end of ther-
more likely than others to engage in bullying, and people with apy were both correlated with more rather than less subsequent
high (so-called genuine) self-esteem were more likely to fight spouse abuse (rs ϭ .08, n.s.).
against bullying. Meanwhile, people with low self-esteem were Another fairly rigorous approach to examining the impact of
more likely than others to be the victims of bullies. self-esteem on aggression is to conduct laboratory experi-
The work by Salmivalli et al. (1999) is the most rigorous ments. Assuming causes precede effects, self-esteem measured
and methodologically sophisticated study of bullying that we at the start of a laboratory session could not be the result of ag-
have found, because it incorporated objective (peer-rated) mea- gressive behavior that is observed later in the session, although
sures of bullying behavior and multiple measures of self- in principle a chronic tendency toward aggression might be the
esteem that allowed for heterogeneity in this construct. The main underlying cause of both the aggression during the experiment
drawback of this study is that it was cross-sectional and corre- and the self-esteem level. Baumeister et al. (1996) were unable
lational, so that causality cannot be determined from it. Does to find any reports of laboratory experiments linking self-esteem
bullying other people cause (defensive) self-esteem to rise, or to aggression. Given the wide popularity of both self-esteem
does defensive high self-esteem lead to bullying? The link be- and aggression as research topics, it did not seem plausible that
tween low self-esteem and victimization can also quite plausi- the possible link between them had never been tested. This
bly be construed in either causal direction: Bullies may choose pointed tentatively toward the conclusion that studies had been
victims on the basis of perceived lack of self-esteem, or being conducted but remained unpublished because of null results.
victimized may be detrimental to self-esteem. A pair of laboratory experiments by Bushman and Baumeis-
Probably the best evidence about the causal links between ter (1998) did provide a direct test of the role of self-esteem in
aggression and self-esteem would come from programs specifi- aggressive behavior. The experiments investigated aggression
cally designed to alter self-esteem. A pair of studies of this type in direct retaliation for an insult, displaced aggression (i.e., par-
was recently reported by Murphy, Stosny, and Morrel (2001), ticipants were insulted by one person and then had a chance to
who tracked domestic offenders through therapy programs that aggress against someone else), and unprovoked aggression
included interventions aimed at boosting self-esteem. Their re- (i.e., participants were praised rather than insulted and then had
search has several drawbacks that must be kept in mind. One a chance to aggress against the praiser). The two studies used
drawback is that the sample consisted of men who were referred different measures of self-esteem. Aggression was measured
by courts to therapy on the basis of spouse abuse. It is generally by the loudness and duration of blasts of aversive, stressful
believed that men in therapy for domestic violence differ from noise participants delivered to an opponent when the opponent
other domestic offenders, not least because they know well that lost a trial in a competitive game.
the situation demands that they express remorse and criticize There were no significant correlations between levels of
themselves. Another drawback of these studies is that the ther- self-esteem and aggression in any of the three situations stud-
apy could hardly focus on self-esteem alone, but also included ied. This confirmed the suspicion that the absence of previ-
interventions directly aimed at reducing violent behavior, and ously published findings probably indicated that studies had
so one must be cautious in attributing any reduction in violent been done but obtained null results.
behavior directly to increases in self-esteem. However, Bushman and Baumeister (1998) did find that nar-
Nonetheless, the two studies are noteworthy because of their cissism was a significant predictor of aggression. Specifically,
focus on real-world adult violence, and because in both cases, narcissists were more aggressive than other individuals when
therapy led to significant increases in self-esteem. These in- provoked by an insult, but did not show elevated rates of dis-
creases were accompanied by significant self-reported reduc- placed or unprovoked aggression. More recent studies by Stucke
tions in spouse abuse. Both before and after treatment, self- and Sporer (2002) demonstrated high aggression among nar-
esteem correlated negatively with aggression, such that higher cissists who had been criticized and further suggested that the
self-esteem was associated with less self-reported aggression, combination of an unclear or confused self-concept with nar-
although the correlations reached significance in only one of cissism is especially likely to lead to aggressive retaliation. The
the two studies. impact of narcissism in those studies provided further support

22 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



for the heterogeneity of high self-esteem, insofar as narcissists they concluded that there were actually two significant links
may be considered a category of high self-esteem people— between self-esteem and delinquency in the data. First, low
people who not only think well of themselves, but also view self-esteem was associated with an increase in delinquent be-
themselves as being superior to others. havior (r ϭ Ϫ.19). Second, delinquent behavior was associated
with an increase in self-esteem (r ϭ .08, marginally signifi-
cant). They also found that these effects interacted with social
Delinquency class. Low self-esteem was most prone to increase delinquency
Juvenile delinquency is of both theoretical and practical in- in the more affluent group, possibly because delinquent behav-
terest. It combines outright aggression, sometimes extending to ior was more normative among the lower classes, so the num-
assault and murder, with antisocial behavior such as stealing bers were already so high that there was not much room for
and vandalism. The assumption that low self-esteem causes ag- increase. Meanwhile, the boost in self-esteem deriving from
gression has traditionally offered one explanation for why delinquent participation was greater among the young men of
young people turn to delinquency, namely, that they lack self- low rather than high (or medium) socioeconomic status.
esteem. However, evidence for the role of self-esteem in delin- Another recent longitudinal study, however, failed to confirm
quency is quite contradictory. In this section, we summarize the conclusions of Rosenberg et al. (1989). In this study, Jang
some of the more important findings. and Thornberry (1998) followed nearly a thousand students
Neumark-Sztainer, Story, French, and Resnick (1997) ob- (starting in seventh and eighth grade) for 4 1/2 years. They dis-
tained self-reports of delinquent behavior by having adoles- tinguished between delinquent activities and associating with de-
cents report how frequently during the past 12 months they had linquent friends, although self-reports were the main source of
damaged or destroyed property, struck or beaten another per- information about both. Jang and Thornberry found no tendency
son, or stolen from a store. Self-esteem showed a significant for low self-esteem to predict subsequent delinquency, whether
negative correlation with self-reported delinquent behavior measured by criminal and antisocial behavior or having delin-
among both boys (r ϭ Ϫ.22) and girls (r ϭ Ϫ.26), but in a re- quent friends. They also failed to find that delinquent activity
gression analysis that controlled for family cohesion, school in- boosted self-esteem, and, if anything, self-reported delinquent
volvement, prior victimization, risk-taking disposition, and activity led to a decrease in self-esteem. Forming friendships
emotional well-being, self-esteem failed to emerge as a signifi- with delinquent peers did, however, boost self-esteem. Thus, any
cant independent predictor, despite the exceptionally large apparent benefits from delinquency appeared to be due to form-
sample (N ϭ 123,132). The lack of independent prediction ing friendships and engaging in social comparison with delin-
does not necessarily undermine the value of self-esteem: Self- quent peers, as opposed to committing violent or antisocial acts.
esteem may have important effects on delinquency that happen Most recently, an ambitious longitudinal study by Trzes-
to be mediated by other variables (e.g., perhaps low self-esteem niewski et al. (2002, Study 2) yielded fairly strong evidence
people are more likely to engage in delinquency because they that self-esteem may indeed play a causal role in externalizing
are more likely to disengage from school and take risks). behavior, a constellation of behaviors that includes delinquency
A more recent study by Trzesniewski, Donnellan, Robins, plus additional antisocial misbehavior not generally considered
Moffitt, and Caspi (2002, Study 1) with 292 fifth- and eighth- delinquent. (The term externalizing behavior reflects the as-
grade students yielded significant correlations (rs ranged from sumption that the person is dumping his or her problem onto
Ϫ.26 to Ϫ.35) between self-reported delinquency and three others.) This study followed students from age 11 (n ϭ 809;
different measures of self-esteem (two self-report measures 48% female) to age 13 (n ϭ 726; 48% female) and assessed ex-
and a teacher report). In this case, the relation remained signif- ternalizing behavior with three relatively objective measures:
icant (standardized coefficient ϭ Ϫ.28) in a complex statistical teacher report, parent report, and an interview report (at age 13
analysis (latent structural equation model) that controlled for only) based on the American Psychiatric Association’s symp-
both supportive parenting and academic achievement. tom criteria for Conduct Disorder. Self-esteem was significantly
One of the most ambitious and intriguing studies of self- correlated with externalizing behavior at both time points (rs
esteem and delinquency was published by Rosenberg et al. ranged from Ϫ.16 to Ϫ.25), and self-esteem at age 11 pre-
(1989). Their nationwide sample included nearly 2,000 adoles- dicted externalizing behavior at age 13 (rs ranged from Ϫ.19 to
cent males who were measured twice. The study’s longitudinal Ϫ.21). Moreover, the contribution of self-esteem was found to
design permits some causal inference, although its exclusive be independent of relationships to parents, relationships with
reliance on self-reports of delinquent behavior means that the peers, IQ, and socioeconomic status. Given the large sample,
results may be compromised by self-report biases. The simple longitudinal design, and multimethod measurement of external-
correlations between self-esteem and self-reported delinquency izing behavior, this study provides the best available evidence
were quite weak in this study, rs ϭ Ϫ.09 and Ϫ.07 at the first for a positive link between low self-esteem and subsequent delin-
and second assessments, respectively. Rosenberg et al. pro- quent behavior.
posed, however, that this seemingly null result might actually Overall, there is some support for the traditional view that
conceal contrary trends. By examining changes across time, low self-esteem may predispose a person to participate in anti-

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 23



social behavior. The correlation between self-esteem and delin- measured largely by an attitude survey consisting of questions
quency varies among studies (from nearly zero to around such as, “How often in general do you get annoyed by others?”
Ϫ.30), but it is almost always negative, suggesting that the ef- The fact that self-esteem had its effects on the less concrete
fect is present, although probably quite weak. There is also measures suggests some potential role for self-report bias.
some suggestion that the effect of self-esteem on delinquency Last, a set of interview and laboratory studies by Colvin,
may be mediated by variables such as school involvement and Block, and Funder (1995) looked specifically at people with in-
choosing to associate with delinquent friends. flated self-esteem. This was done by comparing how favorably
people rated themselves with how favorably they were rated by
others, and the people whose self-ratings were higher than the
Antisocial Behavior peer ratings were classified as having inflated favorable views
Antisocial behavior is a companion to delinquency. By anti- of self. Participants were then invited into the laboratory, and
social behavior, we mean behavior that is socially undesirable their interactions with randomly assigned peers were observed.
but not necessarily violent. An experiment by Lobel and Le- As compared with controls, people who had inflated self-es-
vanon (1988) examined cheating in relation to individual dif- teem exhibited a high rate of antisocial and socially undesir-
ferences in self-esteem and need for approval. The participants able behaviors. They were more prone to interrupt others
were 12-year-old boys and girls in school in Israel. Their task during the conversation. They expressed more hostility and
was to trace line drawings without lifting the pencil or retrac- were found to annoy and irritate their partners. Their conversa-
ing lines. After two easy problems, three unsolvable problems tional style was seen as talking at rather than talking with
were presented, and the children could claim to have solved someone. Despite their favorable self-ratings, they came across
them only if they cheated, which thereby allowed the research- as socially awkward. In a second study, people of this sort were
ers to obtain an objective measure of cheating. Self-esteem did found to be prone to psychological maladjustment and to have
not have a direct effect on cheating, but interacted with need poor social skills.
for approval to determine the amount of cheating. The results
were consistent with the view that self-esteem is a heteroge-
neous construct, in that the children who cheated the most and Conclusion
who cheated the least both had high self-esteem. More pre- Many researchers have sought to link self-esteem to vio-
cisely, those who were high in both self-esteem and need for lence, aggression, and antisocial tendencies. The results are
approval cheated the most, whereas those who were high in mixed at best. Psychologists who wish to study or reduce ag-
self-esteem but had a low need for approval cheated least. The gression might be well advised to focus on factors other than
authors proposed that a distinction between true and defensive self-esteem or, at least, to respect the heterogeneity of high
high self-esteem could account for their results. self-esteem and therefore consider additional variables. In the
School disciplinary problems and related antisocial behav- case of aggression, simple measures of self-esteem have gener-
iors were the focus of a large survey by DeWit et al. (2000). All ally failed to predict objective behavior, whereas high narcis-
students in four secondary schools in Ontario, Canada, were in- sism (presumably one subcategory of high self-esteem) does
cluded in the study, for a total of a thousand participants. Al- lead to aggressive retaliation, a finding consistent with the
though the authors clearly favored the self-esteem hypothesis, threatened-egotism model. Inflated self-esteem, in the sense of
self-esteem was not a significant predictor for three of the five regarding oneself more favorably than one’s peers do, is also
outcome variables. Most notably, self-esteem did not contrib- associated with socially undesirable behaviors. Although most
ute to the prediction of disciplinary problems in school, sub- large studies have found self-esteem to be weak at predicting
stance abuse, or conduct problems. delinquency, school disciplinary problems, and related antiso-
DeWit et al. (2000) relied exclusively on self-reports of anti- cial activities, and in fact some findings suggest that people
social behavior. As we noted earlier, all self-reports are not with some varieties of high self-esteem are most prone to act
equal, with reports of concrete and verifiable misbehavior pre- antisocially, one methodologically strong recent study has sug-
sumably being less subject to distortion and bias than global es- gested that low self-esteem may predispose individuals toward
timates. The reports of school disciplinary problems seem the externalizing behavior.
most concrete and verifiable measure DeWit et al. used, insofar Although further research is needed, one impression that
as students were asked how frequently they had been sus- emerges from these data is that self-esteem simply intensifies
pended, served detentions, been sent to the principal, or been both prosocial and antisocial tendencies. As the study by Salm-
truant in the past 6 weeks. The measures of substance abuse ivalli et al. (1999) showed, people who think well of them-
likewise seem reasonably concrete, although less readily verifi- selves are overrepresented among both the perpetrators of
able, and on these measures self-esteem yielded no significant bullying and the people who stand up to bullies and defend vic-
effects. In contrast, oppositional-defiant disorder (a recurring tims. By the same token, Lobel and Levanon (1988) found that
pattern of negative, hostile, disobedient, and defiant behavior) people high in self-esteem made up both the highest-cheating
was related to low self-esteem. Indications of this disorder were and the lowest-cheating groups. Quite possibly, the actual ef-

24 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



fect of high self-esteem per se is to support initiative and confi- more than 13,000 college students from 49 different universi-
dent action, for good or ill. ties, 31 countries, and five continents. High self-esteem emerged
as the strongest of several predictors of life satisfaction overall.
The simple correlation between self-esteem and happiness was
HAPPINESS, COPING, DEPRESSION
quite significant at .47. In short, self-esteem and happiness are
We turn now to subjective outcomes, such as happiness. The substantially interrelated.
pursuit of happiness is one of the overarching goals in life for The correlation between self-esteem and happiness (life sat-
most people, and feeling happy is one form of positive out- isfaction) varied somewhat across countries. In particular, it
come whose desirability is difficult to dispute. Along with hap- was stronger in individualistic countries than in collectivistic
piness, we consider two other related phenomena. One of these ones. Diener and Diener (1995) proposed that in individualistic
is depression, which is often defined (at least in part) by perva- countries, people are socialized to attend to their own internal
sive unhappiness. The other is coping with stress and trauma. attributes, and so these become important in determining over-
Even if self-esteem were to fail to contribute to a better, hap- all happiness, whereas collectivistic cultures encourage people
pier life overall, it might accomplish a great deal by helping to focus on groups and relationships.
people to recover from aversive events. Misfortunes, problems, In a sample of 406 young people (aged 14–28), Furnham
and setbacks can be experienced as blows to one’s favorable and Cheng (2000) measured a number of potential correlates of
view of self (e.g., Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Taylor, 1983), and it is happiness, including recalled parental rearing styles, scores on
plausible that high self-esteem enables people to recover faster the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, and self-esteem. They
or more thoroughly from such events. reported that self-esteem was the most dominant and powerful
Before we present findings, we must acknowledge that studies predictor of happiness. Shackelford (2001) examined the hap-
of happiness and related variables seem almost inevitably to rely piness of young to middle-aged couples (ages ranged from 17
on self-reports. For other outcomes, we were routinely suspicious to 41) who had been married within the past year and found
and critical of self-report data, and whenever possible we sought that for both husbands and wives, self-esteem was significantly
objective measures. Yet it is not clear what sort of objective mea- correlated with happiness in the form of global, sexual, and
sure could replace self-reports of happiness. It is possible to prove emotional satisfaction.
that people are less (or more) intelligent, attractive, or likable than Data on older adults were provided recently by Lyubomir-
they think they are, but in what sense could researchers conclude sky and Lepper (2002), and these nicely complement the em-
that people are less (or more) happy than they think they are? If phasis on college students in Diener and Diener’s (1995) study.
someone estimates his or her happiness to be at 60 on a scale run- Lyubomirsky and Lepper obtained data from more than 600
ning from 1 (very low happiness) to 100 (very high happiness), adults ranging in age from 51 to 95. Once again, happiness and
there is no objective criterion, or “happiness meter,” that could self-esteem were highly correlated (r ϭ .58). It is important to
show that the person’s true happiness is higher or lower. There is note that in both this study and Diener and Diener’s work, self-
not even any meaningful or realistic way to assert that someone esteem and happiness had very different patterns of correla-
can be mistaken about his or her happiness. As a result, studies in- tions with other predictor variables, which supports the conclu-
vestigating any possible link between self-esteem and happiness sion that happiness and self-esteem are in fact distinct
will necessarily have to rely on self-reports for both measures, de- constructs that can be measured separately despite their rela-
spite the pitfalls and drawbacks of self-reports in connection with tively high intercorrelation. In Lyubomirsky and Lepper’s
establishing the effects of self-esteem. study, self-esteem was more strongly correlated than happiness
Reliance on self-report carries the danger of distorting the with hopelessness, optimism, and sense of mastery, whereas
role of self-esteem. As we reported in preceding sections, peo- happiness was more strongly correlated than self-esteem with
ple with high self-esteem repeatedly emerge as better than oth- energy level, overall health, loneliness, mood and emotion, and
ers in self-report data, whereas objective data often depict such purpose in life.
people to be no better than others. A response bias toward pre- A meta-analysis of the relation between 137 personality
senting the self in favorable, socially desirable ways appears to traits and happiness (subjective well-being) was published by
characterize people high in self-esteem. Hence, one might well DeNeve and Cooper (1998). They found that “private collec-
expect that people with high self-esteem claim to be happier tive self-esteem” (a term they did not explain) was one of the
than other people. However, there does not seem to be any way strongest predictors of happiness (r ϭ .31). Other forms of col-
around this problem, given the lack of objective measures (in- lective self-esteem yielded weaker results in their analysis.
deed the ineluctable subjectivity) of happiness. They do not appear to have included the more typical measure
of self-esteem, nor did they define their terms, but in any case
their results provide further evidence that self-esteem (of some
Happiness sort) is consistently correlated with happiness.
A major international study of self-esteem and happiness Taken together, these findings uniformly indicate that self-
was reported by Diener and Diener (1995). The data came from esteem and happiness are strongly interrelated. They suggest

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 25



that high self-esteem may pay off handsomely for the individ- Another pair of studies did find interactions between self-
ual in terms of subjective happiness. Our main note of caution esteem and life stress predicted participants’ increases in de-
is that the primitive data resemble the simple and previously pressive feelings. Whisman and Kwon (1993) tested a sample
promising correlations between self-esteem and school achieve- of 80 undergraduates on two occasions separated by 3 months.
ment. Further research with longitudinal designs (or other means They found that increases in dysphoria (a term for depression
of testing causal relationships), controls for third variables, and, that is sometimes preferred because it avoids the connotation of
if possible, alternatives to self-report measures would greatly clinical pathology) were predicted by self-esteem, by life
strengthen the case. stress, and by the interaction between the two. As in the studies
already discussed, low self-esteem led to greater depression.
Unlike in those studies, high life stress also led to greater de-
Coping and Depression pression, and the interaction between stress and self-esteem
Studies of coping look specifically at how people respond to was also a significant predictor.
harmful, threatening, traumatic, or otherwise unpleasant events. However, the interaction Whisman and Kwon (1993) found
The hypothesis favored by most theorists is that high self- did not conform to the pattern of the buffer hypothesis. The
esteem operates as a kind of resource that enables people to buffer hypothesis holds that high self-esteem helps people cope
suffer less or to recover more rapidly from such events (e.g., with life stress, so differences between people with high and
Arndt & Goldenberg, 2002). According to this hypothesis, un- low self-esteem should be found mainly under conditions of
der low stress, people would fare reasonably well regardless high life stress. Instead, Whisman and Kwon found the oppo-
of self-esteem, but in the wake of stress, people with high self- site: The self-esteem differences were most pronounced under
esteem would fare better than those with low self-esteem. conditions of low life stress. Moreover, Whisman and Kwon
Sometimes this hypothesis is labeled the buffer hypothesis, be- reported that life stress appeared to have the biggest effect on
cause it asserts that high self-esteem operates as a buffer people with high (rather than low) self-esteem. That is, people
against stress, trauma, and misfortune. with high self-esteem were happy in good times but unhappy
To test the buffer hypothesis, Murrell, Meeks, and Walker during stressful times, whereas the degree of life stress appar-
(1991) interviewed a sample of more than a thousand adults at ently made less difference to people low in self-esteem.
6-month intervals for several years. Contrary to their predic- A larger study along the same lines was conducted by Ralph
tions, self-esteem failed to operate as a buffer, in that the effect and Mineka (1998), who surveyed a sample of 141 undergrad-
of self-esteem on depression was essentially unchanged whether uates more than a week before their midterm examination,
stressful events were included in the statistical analysis or not. again after the exam but before grades were issued, the day af-
Instead, high self-esteem predicted lower depression overall, ter the students received their grades, and 3 days later. This
regardless of stress. In other words, low self-esteem predis- procedure allowed the researchers to track reactions to a partic-
posed individuals toward depression in both good times and ular, well-defined stressful experience with a positive or a neg-
bad, and actual circumstances made little difference. ative outcome. The distress of people with high self-esteem
A similar finding was obtained by Robinson, Garber, and tended to decrease after they received their grades, regardless
Hilsman (1995). Their original sample was composed of nearly of what the grades were. In contrast, the responses of low self-
400 sixth-grade students, almost 300 of whom were inter- esteem people depended on how their grades compared with
viewed again in the fall of seventh grade (and more than 200 what they had sought and expected. (The researchers had asked
were surveyed again in the spring of that year). This timing is the students to indicate the lowest acceptable grade, and the re-
of particular interest because many students move from ele- lationship between that answer and the actual grade was used
mentary to junior high schools between sixth and seventh to classify each student’s outcome as a personal success or fail-
grade, and the change of school can be a potent source of ure.) Contrary to the buffer hypothesis, the greatest increases in
stress. Self-esteem had a direct effect on depression but not on generalized distress occurred among people who had low self-
externalizing behaviors. There was no interaction between self- esteem (and also high pessimism) and received grades that
esteem and stress in predicting either dependent variable. Thus, were acceptable to them. Thus, it was the reaction of people
as Murrell et al. (1991) found, low self-esteem predicted de- with low self-esteem to a relatively good outcome that was
pression regardless of life stress. most problematic and revealing.
It must be noted that Robinson et al. (1995) did find a three- The studies by Whisman and Kwon (1993) and Ralph and
way interaction between stress, self-esteem, and attributional Mineka (1998) produced findings that contradicted the buffer
style. That is, depression was increased by a combination of hypothesis: Differences between people with high versus low
external stresses and a tendency to blame oneself for failure, self-esteem emerged under relatively positive, benign condi-
especially among people low in self-esteem. Put another way, tions, rather than under stressful conditions. Moreover, low
low self-esteem alone did not create a vulnerability to becom- self-esteem seems to poison the good times. In contrast, the
ing depressed in response to stress, but low self-esteem com- buffer hypothesis did receive support from DeLongis, Folk-
bined with a pessimistic and self-blaming style of thinking did. man, and Lazarus (1988) in a study of 75 married couples as-

26 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



sessed 20 times over 6 months. They measured daily hassles, during the preexamination, baseline period) did. Depression in-
physical health and symptoms, and mood. Perhaps surpris- creased most among students who were initially not depressed,
ingly, self-esteem did not moderate the impact of stressful has- had unstable self-esteem, and subjectively failed on the exami-
sles on mood, but it did moderate the link between stressful nation. It also increased among those who were initially de-
hassles and physical symptoms. Participants who were low in pressed, had unstable self-esteem, and did well on the exam.
self-esteem showed a stronger link than others between the Unstable self-esteem also independently predicted an increase
amount of stress they experienced on a particular day and in depression regardless of other factors, although when statis-
whether they had physical illness on the same day and on the tical controls were entered into a more complex analysis, this
following day. Moreover, the buffering effect of self-esteem re- effect vanished.
mained significant even in analyses that controlled for the par- Building on this work and other findings, Roberts and Mon-
ticipants’ emotional support and the size of their social roe (1994) proposed a general theoretical account of the role of
networks. Thus, people with low self-esteem were apparently self-esteem in depression. They acknowledged that low self-
more prone than others to get sick or suffer other physical esteem has often been proposed as a risk factor that creates a
problems in connection with stressful daily events. vulnerability to depression, but concluded that in research,
Metalsky, Joiner, Hardin, and Abramson (1993) also found level of self-esteem has failed to emerge as a robust predictor
support for the buffer theory, although only under certain con- of the onset of depression. They proposed that vulnerability to
ditions. They assessed self-esteem and other factors in a sam- depression accompanies unstable self-esteem (i.e., self-esteem
ple of more than a hundred students prior to midterm grade that is prone to fluctuate across time), as well as self-esteem
reports and then took several measures on the day midterm based on relatively few and unreliable sources.
grades were received and for 5 consecutive days thereafter. The buffer theory was supported in Corning’s (2002) re-
Subjective failure on the midterm was defined as getting a search on reactions to perceived discrimination among women.
grade below the level the student had previously stated as ac- As in most other studies, there was a general tendency for peo-
ceptable. Increases in depression at first depended solely on ple with high self-esteem to feel better than those with low self-
subjective failure, regardless of other factors. Over time, how- esteem regardless of events. However, self-esteem interacted with
ever, depressive reactions were found to be a product of a perceived discrimination. Women with low self-esteem reacted
three-way interaction. Substantial increases in depression were to being the target of discrimination by becoming distressed,
found only among people who fit three criteria: subjective fail- whereas the effects of discrimination were much weaker on
ure, negative (self-blaming) attributional style, and low self- women with high self-esteem. Corning examined a variety of
esteem. (These results are quite consistent with the pattern of bad outcomes, including anxiety, depression, and physical symp-
findings reported by Robinson et al., 1995, described earlier in toms, rather than focusing exclusively on distress.
this section.) Thus, low self-esteem, especially in combination Recent work by Roese and Pennington (2002) suggests a
with a self-blaming attributional style, made people more vul- possible reason why people with high self-esteem apparently
nerable to feeling depressed in response to a real-life stressor cope better with discrimination than people with low self-
over a short period of time. esteem do. People with high self-esteem tend to have a gap be-
A similar investigation by Roberts and Monroe (1992) tween their perception of discrimination against their group
reached a somewhat different conclusion. They, too, tracked a and their perception of discrimination against themselves. That
sample (N ϭ 216) of college students, and measured self-esteem is, they believe that their group is often the victim of discrimi-
before midterm exams and depression afterward. Academic nation, but that they themselves have not been victims.
stress was assessed by calculating the difference between a stu- Laboratory experiments by Greenberg et al. (1992) also
dent’s hoped-for grade and actual grade, and then multiplying supported the buffering hypothesis, although with regard to
this difference by the subjective importance (to the student) of anxiety rather than depression. They sought to boost self-esteem
academic achievement. There was a small independent effect by first giving people a personality test and then providing bo-
of self-esteem on depression, such that students with lower gus feedback that conveyed a very positive evaluation. After-
self-esteem just before the examination reported more depres- ward, the participants were exposed to one of several stressors,
sion after getting their grades, regardless of what their grades including having to watch upsetting images of gruesome death
were. This effect is interesting, despite its small size, because it and receiving bad feedback on an IQ test. The stressors tended
shows low self-esteem leading to increased depression over a to produce increases in self-reported anxiety and signs of phys-
short period of time. Unfortunately, the effect was not main- ical distress, but these effects were attenuated among people
tained in the later days of the study, which is puzzling and casts whose self-esteem had been boosted.
doubt on the impact of self-esteem on depression. The buffer hypothesis also received support from a recent
Level of self-esteem did not interact with academic stress to pair of studies by Bonanno et al. (2002), although they used a
predict depression in Roberts and Monroe’s (1992) study, con- measure of self-enhancement (i.e., whether participants rated
trary to the buffer theory. However, unstable self-esteem (mea- themselves as better than average and more highly than peers
sured in terms of within-person variance in self-esteem scores rated them on various dimensions) rather than a standard self-

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 27



esteem measure. Bonanno et al. examined reactions to stress in esteem on schoolwork, but rather other background causes lead
two very different populations, residents of Bosnia during the to both, and to some extent good school performance leads to
recent civil war and young to middle-aged residents of the San higher self-esteem. Happiness seems to us to be more promis-
Francisco Bay area whose spouse had died within 3 years of ing than academic performance as a potential consequence of
marriage. The full buffer hypothesis could not be tested be- self-esteem, but the alternative causal pathways need to be con-
cause these studies did not include low-stress control groups, sidered with equal rigor and care.
but in both studies, self-enhancers reported better coping than Second, happiness and depression have been studied mainly
non-self-enhancers. Moreover, the findings for the self-report by means of self-report. As we have seen, the tendency of some
data were supported by more objective data: The good adjust- people toward general floccinaucinihilipilification may pro-
ment of the self-enhancers was confirmed in mental health ex- duce both their low self-esteem and unfavorable reports about
perts’ ratings based on clinical interviews. other aspects of life. Clearly, objective measures are much
How can all these findings on the relation between depres- more difficult to obtain for happiness and depression than for
sion and self-esteem be integrated? First, nearly every study academic performance. But the lessons from academic perfor-
did find that people low in self-esteem felt more depressed or mance, interpersonal skill, physical attractiveness, and the like
otherwise worse than people high in self-esteem. Second, the are sobering with regard to self-reports.
buffer hypothesis (namely, the hypothesis that low self-esteem Support for the buffer hypothesis is uneven, but there are
creates vulnerability to stress) received its best support in stud- several strong and supportive findings. The correlations between
ies that used outcome measures other than depression, such as high self-esteem and happiness and between low self-esteem
physical illness or anxiety. Third, when low self-esteem did in- and depression may conceal some influence of circumstances.
teract with life stress, the findings were about evenly split as to Yet further research is needed to untangle these processes.
whether they supported the buffer hypothesis or the opposite Some studies supported the buffer hypothesis: Low self-esteem
pattern—that is, half the studies confirmed that low self-esteem produced its detrimental effects mainly in bad times. Others
increased vulnerability to stress but was irrelevant in good found the opposite: Low self-esteem seemed to poison the
times, whereas the rest found that low self-esteem poisoned the good times, whereas in bad times everyone suffered. Still oth-
good times rather than exacerbating vulnerability to the bad ers found circumstances to be irrelevant, and low self-esteem
times. Last, some findings favor a more complicated version of simply predicted worse outcomes in both good times and bad.
the buffer hypothesis that incorporates a third variable, namely, The final resolution of this theoretical controversy is not in
self-blame. In other words, the combination of low self-esteem, sight, and we recommend that researchers continue to conduct
self-blame, and stressful or aversive events causes depression tests and analyses to illuminate this question, all the while be-
to increase. ing cognizant of conflicting findings. It seems fair to assume
that the ultimate answer will be more complex than the original
buffer hypothesis. Nonetheless, the findings consistently sug-
gest that low self-esteem leads to poorer outcomes, including
Conclusion depression and possibly physical illness, under some circum-
The link between self-esteem and happiness is strong. Peo- stances.
ple with high self-esteem are significantly, substantially hap-
pier than other people. They are also less likely to be depressed,
either in general or specifically in response to stressful, trau-
HEALTH, SMOKING, ALCOHOL AND OTHER
matic events. Many studies have confirmed this link.
DRUGS, SEX, EATING
Before it is safe to conclude that self-esteem causes happi-
ness, however, further research must address the methodologi- There are a number of reasons to believe that high levels of
cal shortcomings of the work that has been done so far. First, self-esteem may have a beneficial impact on physical health.
causation needs to be established, and potential third-variable For example, as we noted earlier, high self-esteem individuals
causes need to be ruled out. It seems plausible that self-esteem perceive that they have more social support, and perceptions of
causes happiness, but no research has shown this. The strong social support have well-documented relations with numerous
correlation between self-esteem and happiness is just that—a health outcomes, including length of life (see Ornish, 1998, for
correlation. It is possible that occupational, academic, or inter- a summary).
personal successes cause both happiness and high self-esteem, Another reason to surmise that high self-esteem might have
whereas corresponding failures cause both unhappiness and benefits for health lies in the vast literature demonstrating the
low self-esteem. It is even possible that happiness, in the sense impact of stress (especially chronic stress) on health. Stress is,
of a temperament or disposition to feel good, causes high self- of course, a highly subjective response, and depends critically
esteem. In this regard, the research on academic performance is on both the individual’s interpretation of events and his or her
informative: The correlations between self-esteem and good beliefs about coping resources that are available (Lazarus &
grades do not seem to derive from any causal impact of self- Folkman, 1984). Because high self-esteem people interpret

28 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



negative events more benignly, perceive that they have greater Unlike overall health, many health-relevant behaviors have
control, and are generally more optimistic about their coping been studied in relation to self-esteem. Foremost among these
abilities, it seems reasonable that they would experience less are several sets of destructive or risky behaviors that young
stress and therefore enjoy better levels of physical health than people engage in. The public interest in self-esteem is moti-
people with low self-esteem. vated in part by the hope that boosting self-esteem will help
The adverse health consequences of stress are primarily me- young people abstain from abusing alcohol and other drugs,
diated by activation of stress hormones (cortisol). Thus, the smoking cigarettes, succumbing to pathological eating pat-
best indirect evidence for the supposition that high self-esteem terns, and engaging in risky sexual practices. We summarize
benefits health comes from studies demonstrating that people the findings regarding these behaviors in this section.
who differ in self-esteem show differential cortisol reactivity in A major shortcoming of most of these studies is that they
response to stressors experienced in the laboratory. In general, rely primarily on self-reports. To be sure, it would be neither
these studies have shown that when the stressor involves actual ethical nor practical to attempt to induce youngsters to take il-
failure or the strong potential for failure (e.g., for elderly peo- legal drugs or engage in risky sex during a laboratory experi-
ple, a challenging test of ability to drive a car), cortisol re- ment, and attempting to observe these covert activities in the
sponses are higher in participants with low self-esteem than in world outside the laboratory is also not very practical. Hence,
those with high self-esteem (Kirschbaum et al., 1995; Pruess- some degree of reliance on self-report is difficult to avoid. Still,
ner, Hellhammer, & Kirschbaum, 1999; Seeman et al., 1995). interpretation of the findings should be tempered with recogni-
Nonetheless, there are only a few studies that provide any tion that people high in self-esteem will tend to report more so-
direct evidence linking self-esteem and objective health out- cially desirable patterns of behavior than people with low self-
comes. In a study of 502 adults who were over 60 years of age esteem. Also, self-reporting of specific behaviors is presum-
and had cardiovascular disease, high self-esteem predicted bet- ably more reliable than vague, general self-ratings.
ter physical and psychosocial functioning 12 months later
among female, but not male, participants (Forthofer, Janz,
Dodge, & Clark, 2001). And an earlier study of more than
1,300 Helsinki policemen showed that among those whose Smoking
electrocardiograms had signs of coronary heart disease, lower Smoking is widely recognized as detrimental to health. If
self-esteem was related to a higher risk of dying from myocar- high self-esteem could help prevent smoking, even just among
dial infarction over the next 10 years (Nirkko, Lauroma, Silt- young people, that would be a valuable contribution to individ-
anen, Tuominen, & Vanhala, 1982). ual welfare and society at large. It is also possible that smoking
Several studies have found that people high in self-esteem affects self-esteem rather than the reverse, because the self-
rate their overall health better than people with low self-esteem esteem of smokers who feel stigmatized may suffer. Several large
(e.g., Glendinning, 1998). James (1997) found that collective investigations have explored possible links between self-esteem
self-esteem (such as racial pride) predicted self-reported health and smoking, although smoking has generally been measured
in a small sample of African American workers but not White only by self-report, and findings that people with high self-esteem
workers. In a large sample of 1,700 Scottish youth, aged 14 to 16, smoke less than others might be an artifact of self-report bias.
Glendinning (1998) found that self-esteem was linked to self- Three studies have suggested that low self-esteem is linked
ratings of health, but not to self-reports of health-relevant be- to smoking, but unfortunately none of them shows that low
haviors. Still, these latter findings were not verified by objective self-esteem clearly leads to subsequent smoking. Pederson,
measures, and could be distorted by the usual self-report bias. Koval, McGrady, and Tyas (1998) surveyed more than 1,600
Although we regard it as premature to draw any conclusions Canadian eighth graders, distinguishing multiple categories of
about the impact of self-esteem on physical health, this does smokers. The current smokers had lower self-esteem than the
seem an area that deserves further study (and any null findings adolescents who had never smoked. The self-esteem of ex-
should be published). In particular, further investigation through smokers was in between, and experimental smokers (i.e., those
longitudinal designs that control for potential mediators or who tried out smoking occasionally without becoming regular
moderators of the relation would be desirable. It is conceivable smokers) had nearly the same level of self-esteem as the eighth
that the benefits of high self-esteem, including feeling good, graders who had never smoked.
lead directly to better health. Then again, the studies we sur- In a younger sample of nearly 1,500 third-grade and fifth-
veyed all found self-esteem to be correlated with better health grade students in central North Carolina, Jackson, Henriksen,
only in some groups and not in others, and they differed as to Dickinson, and Levine (1997) found that children with lower
which groups benefited. It is also possible that underlying bio- self-esteem were more likely to admit to having smoked on oc-
logical causes, such as temperament or good physical condition, casion.
contribute to both self-esteem and health, in which case inter- A longitudinal study by Andrews and Duncan (1997)
ventions aimed at raising self-esteem would likely have no effect tracked more than 400 adolescents, whose age at the start of
on health. In any case, more and better research is warranted. the study was between 11 and 15, for 3 years. The researchers

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 29



were particularly interested in whether self-esteem and other Glendinning (1998) found that self-esteem had no correlation
variables would mediate the relation between academic moti- with self-reported smoking.
vation and cigarette smoking (among other variables). Self- A Canadian sample of more than 1,500 sixth graders was
esteem did not mediate this relation, but it was an independent studied by Koval and Pederson (1999). In view of the generally
predictor of smoking. When self-esteem and smoking were mea- weak findings from previous research on self-esteem and
sured at the same time, the average correlation between them smoking, they measured stress in order to look for possible in-
was Ϫ.18. Lagged correlations across time yielded no clear teractions (e.g., perhaps the combination of stress plus low
pattern as to whether self-esteem predicted subsequent smok- self-esteem would lead to the most smoking, a pattern consis-
ing or smoking predicted subsequent self-esteem. tent with the predictions of the buffer hypothesis). Self-esteem
Two additional studies have found that the link between did not have any significant relationship to smoking, either by
self-esteem and smoking depends on gender. Lewis, Harrell, itself or in interaction with stress. This investigation is notable
Bradley, and Deng (2001) surveyed 1,200 10- to 15-year-olds because several other variables (including stress, rebellious-
living in three tobacco-producing counties in North Carolina. ness, being in control of other aspects of one’s life, and
Among girls, smokers had significantly lower self-esteem than whether the child’s mother smoked) did yield significant pre-
nonsmokers. Among boys, the smoking and nonsmoking dictions, and so the failure of self-esteem is not due to any
groups did not differ in self-esteem. A sample of more than problem in measuring smoking.
8,000 children (which shrank to 6,530 by the 4th year of the A smaller sample of 183 eighth graders was surveyed by
study) in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, was studied by Abernathy, Dolcini and Adler (1994). They examined not only self-esteem
Massad, and Romano-Dwyer (1995). These researchers found but also membership in various so-called crowds. Global self-
that for girls, low self-esteem in grade 6 predicted a substan- esteem was not related to cigarette smoking. Similarly, in a
tially greater likelihood of smoking by grade 9. Indeed, girls young adult (college student) sample, Sharp and Getz (1996)
with low self-esteem were about 3 times more likely to try cig- found no correlation between self-esteem and smoking.
arettes than other girls. Among boys, self-esteem had no rela- Our study-by-study review suggests the need for a meta-
tionship to smoking. This study is notable both for its large analysis of the literature on self-esteem and smoking. There
sample and for its prospective, longitudinal design. may be a small positive association moderated by gender.
In contrast, several large studies found no relationship what- Given that the largest study (Abernathy et al., 1995) found a
soever. The possible link between self-esteem and smoking longitudinal effect for females, the possibility that low self-esteem
was the specific and primary focus of research by Glendinning is a risk factor for smoking in girls remains a hypothesis wor-
and Inglis (1999). They reported findings from two Scottish thy of further study. Still, there was a preponderance of null
surveys (one national, one local), which included a total of findings, and the few positive findings could conceivably re-
nearly 3,000 young people aged 13 and 14. Noting weakness flect nothing more than self-report bias, or could even indicate
and inconsistency in past findings, they included several mea- that recognizing oneself as a smoker leads to lower self-esteem.
sures of smoking, such as frequency of smoking and having Self-esteem is either irrelevant to the causation of smoking or
given up smoking versus never having smoked. They also at best a weak risk factor in girls.
sorted their respondents into various social categories, such as
socially isolated, conventional, and peer oriented. Despite
these efforts, the data showed no significant relation between Alcohol and Other Drugs
self-esteem and smoking, even when social categories were Abuse of alcohol and other drugs is one of the most worri-
taken into consideration. some behaviors among young people, and there was ample rea-
A longitudinal study of a thousand young people in New son to hope that boosting self-esteem would prevent it (e.g.,
Zealand was reported by McGee and Williams (2000). The re- California Task Force, 1990). In this view, people turn to drugs
searchers assessed self-esteem at age 12 and then inquired for solace because they feel bad, and low self-esteem is often
about an assortment of health-compromising behaviors at age essentially a matter of feeling bad about oneself. Boosting self-
15. There was a slight trend toward greater smoking among in- esteem would therefore remove the need for the escapist abuse
dividuals low in self-esteem, but it failed to reach significance, of these substances.
and given the large sample, a lack of significance must be taken However, other predictions are plausible as well. High self-
as an indication that the relation was negligible. esteem might contribute to drug use, too. Gerrard, Gibbons,
As part of a prospective, longitudinal study of health pat- Reis-Bergan, and Russell (2000) summarized evidence that
terns in a cohort of a thousand young Scots, West and Sweeting young people with high self-esteem may become vulnerable to
(1997) reported on the participants when they were 15. There drug and alcohol abuse, albeit for reasons quite different from
was a slight tendency for the young people with the highest those of their peers with low self-esteem. As we have already
self-esteem to report less smoking than others, but this failed to noted, people with high self-esteem are prone to a variety of bi-
reach significance despite the large sample. In another large ases in how they interpret and understand events, and these bi-
sample (1,700) of rural Scottish youth, ages 14 and 16, ases conspire to make them feel better about themselves. Gerrard

30 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



et al. showed that adolescents with high self-esteem systemati- of 700 students, beginning in middle school, Scheier, Botvin,
cally distort their perceptions of how their parents judge their Griffin, and Diaz (2000) found that students with higher self-
drinking so as to justify their actions. That is, for all adoles- esteem in grade 7 reported more rapid rise in alcohol use over
cents, perceived approval by parents is an important correlate the subsequent years, although this effect appeared only in
of drinking, but the direction of causation differs as a function more complex analyses; simple analyses yielded no relation-
of self-esteem. For teenagers with low self-esteem, perceived ship between self-esteem and alcohol use. These authors were
parental approval leads to more drinking. For those with high surprised to find that alcohol use was linked to high rather than
self-esteem, however, more drinking leads to perceiving greater low self-esteem, and they noted that several other patterns in
parental approval. their data rendered the issue even more obscure. In particular,
Gerrard et al. (2000) also showed that individuals with high across the entire group, the several years of middle school were
self-esteem tend to minimize their own vulnerability. They em- marked by declining self-esteem and increased drinking, and
ploy a variety of cognitive strategies to convince themselves these trends were interrelated such that more rapid decreases in
that bad things will not or cannot happen to them, and ignore self-esteem were accompanied by more severe increases in
disagreeable information. Thus, they distance themselves from drinking. Hence, the apparent link between high self-esteem
the potentially harmful consequences of risky behavior. All and escalating alcohol abuse might reflect the fact that the stu-
these patterns may make people with high self-esteem more dents with the highest initial self-esteem and the lowest initial
prone to drink, take drugs, and engage in other risks (such as drinking had the largest scope for change. It is a common sta-
unsafe sex, a point to which we return later in this section). In tistical illusion for extreme scorers to tend to become less ex-
short, these cognitive strategies might at least offset the factors, treme over time, and it often does not indicate any genuine
such as influenceability and need to escape from bad feelings, difference.
that could induce people with low self-esteem to do the same A cross-sectional survey of college students by Sharp and
things, and as a result people with low versus high self-esteem Getz (1996) found that those who reported having used alcohol
might not differ in their tendency to abuse drugs. in the past month scored higher on self-esteem than those who
The data do not consistently show that adolescent self- reported no alcohol use in the past month. The authors inter-
esteem causes or even predicts abuse of alcohol or other drugs. preted this to mean that using alcohol was a social strategy for
For example, the large-scale study by McGee and Williams making a good impression on peers and therefore in turn re-
(2000) found no relationship between self-esteem (measured at sulted in higher self-esteem, but given the correlational nature
age 9 to 13) and drinking or drug use at age 15. A major longi- of their data, the findings could equally well mean that high
tudinal study of heavy drinking in Finland by Poikolainen, self-esteem leads to greater willingness to drink alcohol.
Tuulio-Henriksson, Aalto-Setälä, Marttunen, and Lönnqvist The study of third and fifth graders by Jackson et al. (1997;
(2001) tracked 700 young people from late adolescence (age described earlier) did find that self-rated self-confidence pre-
15–19 at the start of the study) into adulthood 5 years later. dicted lesser self-reported alcohol use. With teachers’ ratings
They measured both alcohol intake and heavy drinking, with of self-confidence, no effect was found. Moore and Li (1998)
the latter defined as having 13 or more drinks on one occasion. found a weak correlation between low self-esteem and illicit
Self-esteem as measured at the start of the study did not predict drug use, which remained significant after controlling for other
general alcohol consumption 5 years later (r ϭ ϩ.08 for males, variables, in a cross-sectional survey of people with disabili-
r ϭ Ϫ.01 for females), nor did it predict heavy drinking. ties.
Likewise, a 7-year longitudinal study of 125 children (aged Alcohol use showed little relation to self-esteem in the study
7 to 13 at the start of the study) by Hill, Shen, Lowers, and (cited earlier) by Andrews and Duncan (1997). Self-esteem
Locke (2000) found no effect for self-esteem. In this study, al- did, however, predict marijuana use, and in particular was
cohol intake was measured by both self-report and interview- found to be a significant mediator between academic motiva-
ers’ assessments. The focus was on whether self-esteem tion (the study’s main focus) and marijuana use. Essentially,
(among other factors) might serve to buffer the individual the results showed that a decrease in academic motivation led
against stresses, and Hill et al. carefully compared families to a reduction in self-esteem (possibly because poor school-
with a history of alcoholism against other families without that work led to social rejection) and a subsequent increase in mari-
risk factor. Self-esteem did not emerge as a significant predic- juana use. The relationship between self-esteem and marijuana
tor or moderator. use was rather weak, however.
Even when findings do show a link between alcohol and Wills (1994) challenged earlier findings claiming that low
self-esteem, they are mixed and inconclusive. The large study self-esteem leads to drinking or drug abuse. He proposed that
by Glendinning (1998; described earlier, in connection with perceived control over one’s life is more relevant and powerful.
smoking) found that high self-esteem was associated with Because feeling oneself to be in control of one’s life might
more (rather than less) frequent alcohol consumption among overlap with both self-esteem and drug use, researchers might
young men but not women, and self-reported episodes of drunk- find correlations between self-esteem and drug use and mistak-
enness were unrelated to self-esteem. Likewise, in a 4-year study enly conclude that self-esteem, rather than feelings of control,

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 31



was the important factor. Wills surveyed a large sample of characterized by a pervasive illusion that undesirable conse-
nearly 1,800 students in eighth grade and then a year later. His quences will not happen to the self.
measure of perceived control was, in fact, substantially corre- In the California self-esteem project, Crockenberg and Soby
lated with self-esteem (r ϭ .67). He then conducted statistical (1989) looked for evidence whether self-esteem had any rela-
analyses to determine which was more powerful at predicting tionship to teenage sexual activity in general and pregnancy in
use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana. Because self-esteem particular. They found only one longitudinal and three cross-
and perceived control overlapped with each other, it was neces- sectional studies. The longitudinal study found that high self-
sary to sort the data statistically in order to establish the unique esteem led to more sexual activity among males but not fe-
contribution of each (i.e., the effect of each one independent of males (Jessor & Jessor, 1975). Another study found a weak
the other). The unique contribution of perceived control was link between low self-esteem and sexual activity, but this was
more than 6 times as large as the unique contribution of self-es- limited to active Mormons (B.C. Miller, Christensen, & Olson,
teem. Also, the only significant predictor of increase in sub- 1987). A third study found no relationship at all (Cvetkovich &
stance abuse over time was lower levels of perceived control. Grote, 1980), and the last found that high self-esteem was cor-
Wills concluded that any findings linking self-esteem to sub- related with more permissive attitudes toward sex (Herold &
stance abuse may well be inflated because at bottom they sim- Goodwin, 1979). Crockenberg and Soby did, however, think
ply reflect the contribution of perceived control. there was some evidence to support the notion that high self-
Interpretation of the findings regarding drinking and drug esteem facilitates use of contraceptives and hence reduces teen
abuse is probably complicated by the fact that very different pregnancy, although the evidence was mixed. They found only
phenomena are lumped together. Some people experiment with one longitudinal study that measured self-esteem and investi-
drugs recreationally, whereas others become addicted. Some gated its relation to subsequent pregnancy, and this study found
may approach the experience out of curiosity or thrill seeking, no relationship (Vernon, Green, & Frothingham, 1983). An-
whereas others may use it to cope with or escape from chronic other investigation, however, used a measure of self-derogation
unhappiness. Emler (2001) concluded that high self-esteem instead of a standard self-esteem measure, and two different
leads to greater willingness to take physical risks, which may analyses (Kaplan, Smith, & Pokorny, 1979; Robbins, Kaplan,
account for some of the findings that high self-esteem leads to & Martin, 1985) found that the girls who derogated themselves
more use of alcohol and other drugs. more during the seventh grade were more likely to have a sub-
sequent pregnancy.
The longitudinal study of New Zealand adolescents by Mc-
Sexual Behavior Gee and Williams (2000) found no relationship between self-
Sexual behavior is another sphere that seems to have poten- esteem at age 12 and self-reports of sexual intercourse by the
tial for showing links with self-esteem. Some participation in age of 15. Paul, Fitzjohn, Herbison, and Dickson (2000) fol-
sexual behavior, especially at a vulnerable young age, can be lowed an equally large (N ϭ 1,020) sample of New Zealanders
the result of succumbing to influence or even exploitation by from age 3 up to age 21. Self-esteem was measured at age 11.
others. High self-esteem might enable people to resist such in- At age 21, the participants were asked whether they had had
fluence. sexual intercourse before the age of 15. Simple analyses
Such simple predictions do not take account of possible showed no relationship between self-esteem and early sexual
complicating factors, however. For example, a person’s level of behavior. More sophisticated (multivariate) analyses still found
self-esteem may be the result rather than the cause of sexual no link between self-esteem and early sexual initiation for
activity. Third variables may also play an important role. For males. For females, there was a significant effect, although in
example, being attractive and popular may lead to both high the opposite direction from what the advocates of self-esteem
self-esteem and early or frequent sexual activity. Last, as we might have hoped: Girls with higher self-esteem at age 11 were
noted earlier, people high in self-esteem tend to discount vari- more (rather than less) likely to start having sex by the age of
ous health risks (Gerrard et al., 2000), and this can certainly ex- 15. This effect was especially remarkable because the other
tend to the risks associated with sex. Smith, Gerrard, and predictors of early sexual intercourse tended to be socially un-
Gibbons (1997) found that women with high self-esteem desirable or disadvantageous, such as being in trouble at
tended to dismiss and discount risks of unwanted pregnancy school, planning to leave school early, and smoking cigarettes
more than other women, and being reminded of the risks only at an early age.
increased the tendency for women with high self-esteem to be- Thus, prospective work suggests that self-esteem is irrele-
lieve that such misfortunes could not befall them. Similar con- vant to becoming sexually active at an early age or, if anything,
clusions were reached by Burger and Burns (1988), who high self-esteem leads to early sex among girls. In contrast, a
showed that sexually active women with high self-esteem rated survey of a thousand girls and women by Kalil and Kunz
their chances of becoming pregnant as lower than those of (1999) found that the unmarried teenage mothers were less
other women (including women who were not sexually ac- likely than other girls and women to have high self-esteem. In
tive!). Burger and Burns concluded that high self-esteem is this case, self-esteem was measured after the person had en-

32 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



gaged in sex and borne a child; in view of the prospective find- mains unclear, and both directions are plausible, although he
ings, Kalil and Kunz’s results suggest that becoming an unwed favored the view that high self-esteem makes a person more
teen mother causes a reduction in self-esteem. willing to initiate sexual encounters because the threat of rejec-
However, in a large longitudinal survey of young people, tion is less daunting. Walsh also noted that changes in sexual
Oates (1997) found no relationships between fertility in gen- norms may produce dramatic changes in the link between self-
eral and self-esteem. His sample included more than 10,000 esteem and sexual activity, depending on whether sexual purity
young people, aged 14 to 21 at the start of the project and 23 to or sexual experience is more highly valued by the society.
30 at the end of it, and he sought to test both the idea that low Homosexuality is generally stigmatized in our society, and
(or high) self-esteem predisposes individuals toward having one might expect that homosexuals would end up with lower
children and the converse hypothesis that having children af- self-esteem than heterosexuals, although in this case the level
fects self-esteem. No significant relationships were found. In of self-esteem would be the result rather than the cause. Lerner
particular, there was no relationship between self-esteem and and Galambos (1998) found no difference in self-esteem be-
the number of offspring. Oates acknowledged the theory that tween gay and heterosexual adolescents. In contrast, Stokes,
some people may have children as a way of boosting their self- Damon, and McKirnan (1997) found that bisexual men with
esteem, but he concluded that even if that is their goal, these high self-esteem were more likely to shift toward a full homo-
anticipated gains do not seem to materialize. sexual identification than were other bisexual men. This sug-
Some work suggests that self-esteem may be relevant to gests a causal role for self-esteem, presumably indicating that
sexual behavior only in selected populations. Berry, Shilling- some bisexual men may be resisting homosexuality because of
ton, Peak, and Hohman (2000) used data from a national social stigma and other factors, and that the greater self-accep-
(United States) longitudinal study of risk factors for adolescent tance of people high in self-esteem makes them more willing to
pregnancy. Self-esteem of 5,000 young women was measured accept their homosexuality. When homosexuals are attacked or
during early adolescence, and 8 years later the women were victimized for being gay, however, their self-esteem drops af-
asked whether they had become pregnant before age 19. High terward (Waldo, Hesson-McInnis, & D’Augelli, 1998). Thus,
self-esteem reduced the odds of self-reported pregnancy among being victimized leads to lower self-esteem, which is consis-
Black and Hispanic females, but not among Whites and Ameri- tent with the findings on bullying we reported earlier. However,
can Indians. Even among Blacks and Hispanics, the effect was Kendall-Tackett, Williams, and Finkelhor (1993) reviewed
characterized by the authors as slight. many empirical studies on sexual abuse of children and did not
At-risk youth were also the focus of Langer and Tubman find evidence that low self-esteem consistently resulted from
(1997), who studied a special sample of 120 substance-abusing such abuse (cf. Emler, 2001). They noted that many theories
adolescents. They were specifically interested in whether alco- about the impact of sexual abuse on children emphasize dam-
hol and other drug use would predict risky sexual behavior and age to self-image or self-esteem, but research findings had not
whether factors such as self-esteem might moderate the ef- substantiated that such damage occurs.
fect—such as if it was mainly adolescents with low self-esteem Some findings suggest that high self-esteem may reduce
who succumbed to engaging in risky behavior when intoxi- sexual inhibitions. Herold and Way (1983) found that women
cated. Self-esteem had no effect. with high self-esteem were more likely to report that they per-
Beyond these findings, a smattering of confusing results has formed fellatio. Hurlbert and Whittaker (1991) found that
emerged from different studies. Martin and Knox (1997) found women who masturbated had higher self-esteem than other
that unstable self-esteem, unlike level of self-esteem, was cor- women. Herold, Corbesi, and Collins (1994) found that women
related with gay and bisexual men’s reports of engaging in un- with high self-esteem were more likely than other women to go
safe anal sex. topless on Australian beaches. Although these findings are cor-
People with high self-esteem report more frequent use of relational, we regard it as a priori unlikely that high self-esteem
condoms, which might indicate a greater propensity to practice is the result of performing fellatio, masturbating, and showing
safe sex (Hollar & Snizek, 1996). Then again, they also report off one’s breasts in public, and so a causal role for self-esteem
greater frequency of unsafe sex (Hollar & Snizek, 1996). There seems more plausible. Conversely, low self-esteem is corre-
is also some evidence that they may be more likely to have lated with erectile dysfunction among men (Herer & Holz-
abortions (Plotnick, 1992). These seemingly contradictory find- apfel, 1993), but insofar as most erectile dysfunction is now
ings may be reconciled by proposing that they simply have considered to have biological causes, self-esteem seems more
more sex in general, a possibility that is supported by other likely to be the result than the cause in this case.
findings (Strouse & Buerkel-Rothfuss, 1987). Walsh (1991) All in all, the results do not support the simple view that low
found that virginity was linked to low self-esteem among men self-esteem predisposes people to more or earlier sexual activ-
but not among women. He also found that self-esteem was pos- ity. If anything, people with high self-esteem are less inhibited,
itively correlated with number of sex partners; the correlation more willing to disregard risks, and more prone to engage in
was fairly strong for men (r ϭ .25) and weak but significant for sex. Many of these findings could stem from the greater popu-
women (r ϭ .12). As Walsh noted, the direction of causality re- larity of people with high self-esteem (popularity could cause

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 33



both high self-esteem and more sex). They may also reflect orie milkshake to drink, those with low (but not high) self-
greater initiative among people high in self-esteem. Not sur- esteem ate considerably more ice cream later (Polivy, Heather-
prisingly, however, bad sexual experiences and unwanted preg- ton, & Herman, 1988). However consistent these findings are, a
nancies may well lower self-esteem. recent study calls into question whether raising self-esteem
might be useful for treating already-established eating disorder
patterns. In this study (Safer, Lively, Telch, & Agras, 2002),
women who were binge eaters (though not purgers) received
Eating Disorders behavior therapy for 20 weeks and then 6 months later were re-
The literature on eating disorders very consistently docu- assessed. At the follow-up, the difference in self-esteem scores
ments that individuals with eating disorders typically have very between women who relapsed and those who did not was non-
low levels of self-esteem. A recent and particularly impressive significant, and, indeed, those who relapsed had slightly higher
demonstration of this association was reported by French et al. self-esteem.
(2001), who examined the correlates of binge-purge and Although researchers have found fairly consistent associa-
weight-loss behaviors among a sample of more than 48,000 tions between low self-esteem and eating pathology, there is
girls and 47,000 boys in grades 6 through 12 who lived in 213 some debate as to whether low self-esteem is a cause or conse-
cities and towns in the United States. For both genders, self- quence of disordered eating. There are some prospective stud-
esteem and similar variables were the strongest predictors of eat- ies that suggest self-esteem may play a causal role. For example,
ing disorders. Similar results have been obtained in many other Button, Sonuga-Barke, Davies, and Thompson (1996) assessed
studies, including one by Williams et al. (1993), who found that self-esteem in 400 schoolgirls aged 11 to 12 and found that
anorexic and bulimic patients have lower levels of self-esteem those with lower levels of self-esteem were significantly more
than obese dieters, nonobese dieters, and normal controls. likely to have developed an eating disorder at age 15 to 16.
Anorexics’ thinking is pervaded by a discrepancy between There is also some evidence that self-esteem may affect prog-
their own view of themselves and other people’s view of them: nosis; in a 4-year prospective study of bulimic patients, low
They frequently have many accomplishments, abilities, and in- levels of self-esteem at admission were predictive of poorer
terests, but according to anorexia theorists, they are unaware of outcomes (van-der-Ham, van-Strein, & van-Engeland, 1998).
their successes and capabilities. Bruch (1962, 1975, 1978) Heatherton and Polivy’s (1992) spiral model of binge eat-
identified in these patients a paralyzing underlying sense of in- ing, however, posits a bidirectional relationship between diet-
effectiveness that pervades their thinking and activities. Bers ing and self-esteem. They stated that
and Quinlan (1992) showed empirically that this is true, stat-
ing, “This disparity between interests and perceived abilities because each dietary failure may produce lower self-esteem and be-
supports the common clinical observation that anorexics gener- cause lower self-esteem may, in turn, make dietary failure more likely,
individuals who undertake chronic dieting may enter a spiral in which
ally feel incompetent and unable to perform well, although
each failure at dieting produces greater negative affect and precludes
they pursue many activities and objectively could claim many either successful acceptance or successful alteration of their bodies.
accomplishments” (p. 428). (p. 139)
Perhaps because bulimia is a much more pervasive problem
than anorexia, more research has been done to investigate pos- Another factor that must be considered is that women who
sible causes of bulimia. Mintz and Betz (1988) investigated become bulimic have additional problems that contribute to
self-esteem differences in a sample of undergraduate women their vulnerability, and to the extent that these other problems
who were categorized in one of the following categories: nor- are correlated with low self-esteem, the importance of self-
mals, bulimics, bingers (women who eat large amounts of food esteem per se may be exaggerated when they are not taken into
but do not engage in compensatory behaviors), purgers (those account. The best way to examine this hypothesis is to assess
who purge but do not really eat huge amounts of food), chronic the relations between several vulnerability factors (including
dieters, and subthreshold bulimics. They found that bulimics self-esteem) and the continuum of bulimic symptoms among
had much lower self-esteem than any of the other groups. Thus, women who have not sought treatment for bulimia. If this can
the impact of self-esteem may be tied specifically to the pattern be done in a prospective study, the causal direction of any link
of bingeing and purging. between low self-esteem and bulimic symptoms can be tested.
Bulik, Wade, and Kendler (2000) studied the relation be- This method was employed by Vohs and her colleagues
tween self-esteem and bulimia in monozygotic (“identical”) (Vohs, Bardone, Joiner, Abramson, & Heatherton, 1999; Vohs
twins. Although monozygotic twins have the same genetic pre- et al., 2001; for a summary, see Vohs et al., 2002), who con-
disposition to bulimia, it is sometimes the case that one twin ducted two prospective studies with a sample totaling more
has the disorder and the other does not. In a sample of such than 400. Vohs et al. (1999) measured self-esteem, perfection-
twin pairs, Bulik et al. found that the twin with bulimic symp- ism, feeling overweight, and bulimic symptoms at the initial
toms had significantly lower self-esteem than the other. In a assessment and then measured bulimic symptoms again an av-
laboratory study of chronic dieters who were given a high-cal- erage of 9 months later. They found that although self-esteem

34 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



scores were significantly correlated with bulimic symptoms limia, and there are some links to longevity and physical health
(Ϫ.52 and Ϫ.36 at the first and second assessments, respec- that seem well worth further study.
tively), self-esteem was not a significant predictor of change in Most studies on self-esteem and smoking have failed to find
bulimic symptoms in a statistical model that also included the any significant relationship, even with very large samples and
effects of perfectionism and feeling overweight. Bulimia was the correspondingly high statistical power. The studies that
not predicted by the combination of level of self-esteem with have found a relationship have tended to find it only in some
level of perfectionism or with feeling overweight. Analyses analyses, such as only among girls and not boys, or only for
showed, however, that a combination of all three factors was a some ages, or only for current smokers and not for ex-smokers
significant predictor of increases in bulimic symptoms. Specifi- or experimental smokers.
cally, the combination of high perfectionism and feeling over- Self-esteem also does not seem relevant to use of alcohol
weight was predictive of increased bulimic symptoms across 9 and other drugs, although we did not find much highly rigorous
months, but only among low self-esteem women. This finding data on use of illegal drugs, and it is conceivable that further
suggests that low self-esteem is a risk factor for bulimic symp- studies might paint a different picture. Large, longitudinal in-
tomatology, but only when it is accompanied by exceedingly vestigations have tended to yield no relationship between self-
high standards for oneself (perfectionism) and a feeling that esteem and either drinking in general or heavy, problem drink-
those standards are not being met (feeling overweight). ing in particular. The few studies that have found links point in
A second study, across a 5-week period, showed the same different directions, with some linking alcohol use to higher
pattern of results (Vohs et al., 2001). In this study, there were self-esteem and others to lower self-esteem. Moreover, even if
simple associations between self-esteem scores and bulimic some correlations between low self-esteem and substance
symptoms, but the only statistical factor to predict increased bu- abuse could be found, they might well turn out to be based on
limic symptoms was the combination of having low self-esteem, third variables, such as perceived control (Wills, 1994). What-
having high body dissatisfaction, and being highly perfectionis- ever the causes of alcohol abuse and drug addiction, low self-
tic. This study also examined the development of anxiety and esteem per se does not appear to be one of them.
depressive symptoms, and analyses showed that self-esteem did Self-esteem does not appear to prevent early sexual activity
not, on its own, predict change in depression or anxiety when or teen pregnancy. Some studies have found self-esteem to be
perfectionism and body dissatisfaction were taken into account. unrelated to sexuality. Others have yielded small effects that
However, the results for depression mirrored the pattern seen sometimes point in contrary directions. One promising pattern
for bulimia: The greatest increase in depressive symptoms oc- suggests that high self-esteem reduces sexual inhibitions, en-
curred among women who had high perfectionism scores, high abling women to engage in various sexual practices more
body dissatisfaction, and low self-esteem. freely and enabling people to accept their homosexual tenden-
Taken together, these studies suggest that self-esteem does cies. Still, the causal inference is speculative, and it is quite
play a role in various eating problems. However, it is also implausible that greater sexual freedom leads to popularity, which
portant to consider that the role of self-esteem may be much in turn boosts self-esteem, as the sociometer model might pre-
more complex than is suggested by the simple correlations be- dict. Indeed, there are various signs supporting the hypothesis
tween constructs. Bulimics, in particular, may have low self- that popularity is the hidden variable behind the correlations
esteem, although low self-esteem may be both a predisposing between high self-esteem and greater sexual activity.
cause and a consequence of the disordered eating. A recent The data do, however, suggest a role for self-esteem with re-
study of obese women supports this idea. Matz, Foster, Faith, spect to disordered eating patterns. Concurrent and prospective
and Wadden (2002) found that self-esteem was second only to findings indicate that low self-esteem is a risk factor in disor-
being teased in the ability to predict degree of body-image dis- dered eating, with evidence suggesting that the development of
satisfaction. However, we again note that the influence of self- bulimic symptoms may be affected both directly by the pres-
esteem on pathological eating patterns may be a consequence ence of low self-esteem and indirectly by the interaction of low
of the presence of other risk factors (such as perfectionism and self-esteem with other factors (e.g., Vohs et al., 1999, 2001).
body dissatisfaction) or of the interaction between low self- However, eating disorders are usually preceded by chronic di-
esteem and these other factors. eting and body dissatisfaction, which themselves are related to
low self-esteem (see, e.g., Heatherton & Polivy, 1992; Matz et
al., 2002). And it is also important to note that some women
with eating disorders also have other disorders, such as anxiety
Conclusion and depression, that are also related to low self-esteem. In
Most studies reviewed in this section relied on self-report, short, there is a complex set of relationships through which
and the possibility of response bias is therefore substantial. self-esteem has its effects on vulnerability to eating disorders.
Even so, the studies do not provide a great deal of evidence that Nonetheless, on the whole, we conclude that low self-esteem is
high self-esteem can prevent undesirable outcomes. The most a concurrent and prospective risk factor for eating disorder
promising possibility is that high self-esteem might prevent bu- symptoms.

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 35



GENERAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS and are recognized by peers as contributing more. There are
some weak simple correlations between self-esteem and lead-
Our goal was to survey the research literature in order to as-
ership, but analyses that control for other factors have found
sess whether self-esteem has important consequences. The task
that self-esteem has little in the way of direct and unique causal
was complicated by four main factors: (a) the many thousands
impact. The possibility remains, however, that self-esteem has
of articles alluding to self-esteem; (b) the tendency of people
indirect effects that are mediated by other factors, such as lead-
high in self-esteem to rate themselves as superior on many di-
ership efficacy.
mensions (and the floccinaucinihilipilification among people
People with high self-esteem have a stronger tendency than
with low self-esteem); (c) the difficulty of establishing the di-
those with low self-esteem to judge and treat their own groups
rection of causal relationships; and (d) the heterogeneity of
more favorably than out-groups. (This may be regarded either
high self-esteem. When possible, we restricted our search to
positively, as in supporting group pride, or negatively, as in
studies with objective measures, and we have emphasized large
contributing to prejudice and discrimination.)
longitudinal studies that offered some opportunity to assess the
Self-esteem is essentially unrelated to aggression, although
direction of causality.
this overall pattern may conceal divergent trends for different
Our particular interest was in the possible benefits of high
kinds of high self-esteem. Some categories of high self-esteem
self-esteem and the corresponding costs of low self-esteem. As
(such as defensiveness or narcissism) are associated with height-
we note later, this is not the only possible theoretical perspec-
ened aggression. High self-esteem predicts being a bully and sup-
tive, but it is the one that has characterized the self-esteem
porting a bully–but a different category of high self-esteem
movement and indeed our own initial interest in self-esteem.
predicts defending victims against bullies. High self-esteem may
Does high self-esteem make life better? Should parents, teach-
thus amplify both prosocial and antisocial tendencies. Low self-
ers, or anybody else seek to boost self-esteem whenever possi-
esteem is associated with victimization, although whether the
ble? We begin with a summary of our main findings.
low self-esteem is the cause or consequence is not known.
Self-esteem has at best a weak relationship to delinquency.
Summary of Findings Many findings are tainted by possible self-report bias and by
High self-esteem does not reliably cause any improvement inconsistencies across studies. Some studies suggest that low
in academic performance. If anything, high self-esteem may be self-esteem predisposes people to engage in more delinquent
the result (but only weakly) of doing well in school. Other fac- behavior later on (at least, by their own report), whereas other
tors may underlie both self-esteem and academic performance. studies have found no effect. However, one recent study pro-
People with high self-esteem do better than other people on vided good evidence that low self-esteem leads to delinquency
some jobs and tasks, although most laboratory studies and many (Trzesniewski et al., 2002).
field studies have found no difference. Quite possibly, occupa- Likewise, there is little to connect self-esteem directly to anti-
tional success leads to high self-esteem rather than the reverse. social behavior. If anything, some subcategories of high self-
High self-esteem does improve persistence in the face of esteem are associated with antisocial behavior. Again, self-esteem
failure, especially when persistence is an adaptive strategy. may magnify both prosocial and antisocial tendencies.
People with high self-esteem are more willing than others to Happiness appears to be the most desirable correlate of high
choose their own strategies, and they are more responsive to self-esteem. Although research is needed to establish causality
situational cues indicating when to persist and when to move and to control for other variables, it seems quite possible that
on to a more promising alternative. high self-esteem contributes to making people happy. Low self-
People high in self-esteem regard themselves as better liked esteem is linked to depression and may be a risk factor for it.
and more popular than others, but most of these advantages ex- However, the relationship is weak, inconsistent, and condi-
ist mainly in their own minds, and objective data (such as rat- tional on other variables.
ings by peers) generally fail to confirm them. In some cases, The buffer hypothesis proposes that high self-esteem helps
such as after an ego threat, people with high self-esteem are ac- people cope with stress and adversity. There are some positive
tually disliked more than others. findings to support this view. Other findings, however, indicate
There is relatively little known about the impact of self-esteem that self-esteem is more relevant under low than high stress
on close relationships. The evidence that is available indicates (low self-esteem poisons the good times). Yet other findings in-
both advantages and disadvantages. Thus, wives complain more dicate no effect of self-esteem in either direction. Still, no find-
about husbands with low than high self-esteem, although the di- ings show worse outcomes or poorer coping among people
rection of causality is unclear. People with high self-esteem are with high self-esteem than among those with low self-esteem.
more willing than others to terminate a relationship, but there is Thus, self-esteem may contribute to coping and adjustment af-
no sign that their relationships actually suffer more or end ter stress or trauma, although the precise nature of the relation-
sooner. ship may be complicated and may depend on other factors.
People with high self-esteem sometimes perform better than Self-esteem is largely irrelevant to smoking. At best, to a
people with low self-esteem in groups. They speak up more small degree high self-esteem may lead to less smoking among

36 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



young females. Given the null findings in some large studies, Implications for Understanding the Nature
self-esteem is probably not worth considering as a cause of of Self-Esteem
smoking. Use of alcohol or other drugs also does not show a The benefits of high self-esteem can be tentatively summa-
consistent relationship to self-esteem. If anything, young peo- rized in terms of two main themes, although these remain
ple with high self-esteem may be more willing than others to somewhat speculative and are contingent on further work sup-
experiment. porting the conclusions we just summarized. First, high self-
High self-esteem does not prevent early, extensive, or risky esteem appears to operate as a stock of positive feelings that
sexual activity. If anything, people with high self-esteem dis- can be a valuable resource under some conditions. In the face
play fewer inhibitions, more disregard for risks, and greater of failure or stress, people with high self-esteem seem able to
sexual initiative. bounce back better than people with low self-esteem. The gen-
Low self-esteem is a risk factor that can contribute to eating eral pattern of being happier and less depressed indicates a
disorders, especially bulimia. Its relation to bulimia may be es- readiness to feel good. People with low self-esteem lack this
pecially strong in the presence of other factors, such as body stock of good feelings and as a result are more vulnerable.
dissatisfaction and perfectionism. Second, high self-esteem appears linked to greater initiative.
We conclude our summary of findings with some general We suggested that people with high self-esteem are more prone
points. to both prosocial and antisocial actions (e.g., both bullying and
defending victims against bullies), compared with people with
low self-esteem. They initiate interactions and relationships
• With the exception of the link to happiness, most of the ef- (and perhaps exit them, too). They speak up in groups. They
fects are weak to modest. Self-esteem is thus not a major experiment with sex and perhaps drugs. They try harder in re-
predictor or cause of almost anything (again, with the possi- sponse to initial failure, but they are also willing to switch to a
ble exception of happiness). new line of endeavor if the present one seems unpromising.
• Moreover, the effects of self-esteem become weaker as the There appear to be relatively few personal costs to high self-
criteria for evidence become more objective. It is perhaps no esteem. If anything, the costs of high self-esteem (and espe-
accident that the strongest apparent benefit of self-esteem cially of certain subcategories of high self-esteem, such as nar-
has been found for the most subjective outcome, namely, cissism) are borne by other people. People high in self-esteem
happiness. As we noted at the outset, people with high self- or narcissism are prone to bully others, to retaliate aggres-
esteem seem sincerely to believe they are smarter, more ac- sively, and to be prejudiced against out-group members. Self-
complished, more popular and likable, and more attractive enhancers are sometimes annoying or obnoxious to others.
than other people, but some of those apparent advantages are They may be willing to cheat and perform other antisocial,
illusory. But happiness can coexist well with illusions and self-serving acts. The most palpable cost to the self is that of
may even be supported by them, so the fact that objective overconfident risk taking (see Emler, 2001), and the evidence
data disconfirm many of the subjective advantages people supporting this possibility is quite sparse.
with high self-esteem believe they have is not necessarily a Thus, a tentative formula to integrate the diverse findings is
reason to dismiss self-esteem as useless. that self-esteem confers some benefits on the self, including feel-
• The research repeatedly attests to the heterogeneity of high ing quite good, while its costs accrue to others. Having a firm
self-esteem, and many researchers have invoked some sort of sense of privileged superiority over everyone else may well be a
distinction between being conceited, narcissistic, and defen- pleasant, rewarding state, but having to live or work with some-
sive, on the one hand, as opposed to accepting oneself with one who holds such an inflated self-view may have its drawbacks.
an accurate appreciation of one’s strengths and worth, on the Indeed, the socially disruptive consequences of egotism may ex-
other. plain why people tend to be modest and self-effacing when inter-
• The effects of self-esteem are often enmeshed with the ef- acting with friends (Tice, Butler, Muraven, & Stillwell, 1995) or
fects of other correlated variables, and so some apparent effects when living in cultures characterized by stable, interdependent re-
of self-esteem vanish when other variables are controlled for. lationships (Heine et al., 1999). If self-esteem does benefit the
The appropriateness of controlling for these other variables self while carrying some cost to others, then its pursuit is more
is debatable, however. One could argue that self-esteem de- suited to an individualistic than a collectivistic culture.
serves credit for so-called indirect effects, even if other vari-
ables are more directly related to the outcome.
• A final point, which is related to the others, is that it is far What About Accurate (Not High) Self-Esteem?
from clear that interventions aimed at boosting self-esteem In our review of the literature, we focused on investigating
will be sufficient to produce positive outcomes. The seeming the benefits of high self-esteem. Given that these benefits are
benefits of self-esteem could be a product of other factors limited at best, it may be appropriate to rethink the basic ques-
that overlap with self-esteem, of subjective bias, and of re- tion. Perhaps it is more valuable and adaptive to understand
ciprocal causal relationships. oneself honestly and accurately, even when this means feeling

VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003 37



bad about oneself when that is warranted by unethical, harm- studies we reviewed distinguished carefully between different
ful, socially undesirable, or otherwise inappropriate behavior. categories of favorable self-regard, yet these few often found
According to this view, self-esteem could serve valuable and the distinction to be quite powerful. Indeed, sometimes oppo-
helpful functions (such as for managing one’s life) insofar as it site relationships existed, which summed to a deceptive ap-
is based on an accurate, rather than inflated, assessment of pearance of no correlation when all forms of high self-esteem
one’s characteristics. That would mean that accurate self- were lumped together. We recommend that researchers inter-
knowledge would be more useful than high self-esteem. ested in self-esteem begin paying closer attention to narcis-
Such an argument has been suggested by Kirkpatrick and sism, self-deception, stability of self-esteem, and other distinctions
Ellis (2001). They presented their ideas within an evolutionary within the broad category of self-esteem. For practitioners, the
framework, although other frameworks might also work. Their implication is that high self-esteem as such may not be worth
point was that an accurate understanding of self can save con- cultivating, because some forms of it are unhelpful and possi-
siderable time and energy. In the pursuit of mates, for example, bly harmful—but other forms or versions of it may be quite
it could spare people the wasted effort (not to mention disap- beneficial.
pointment and heartbreak) of pursuing mates who will reject Although splitting high self-esteem into categories may be
them. By the same token, accurate self-knowledge might help seen as fatal to the self-esteem movement, a more optimistic
people know what courses to take in school or what occupa- and charitable conclusion is that such splitting may yet hold the
tions to pursue, avoiding both ones that are too difficult (which key to reaping some of the benefits that self-esteem advocates
would produce failure) and those that would be too easy (and have long promised. Self-esteem per se is not the social pana-
hence would be unrewarding). Although people might prefer to cea that many people once hoped it was, but if researchers can
hold highly favorable views of themselves, accurate views effectively identify the adaptive, desirable subcategories of
would almost certainly be more useful, insofar as accurate in- high self-esteem, it may yet be possible to say that certain ways
formation is conducive to more effective decision making. of thinking about oneself can cause good things to happen. To
A new emphasis on self-esteem that accurately reflects ca- propose how thinking of oneself can bring about good out-
pabilities and interpersonal characteristics would hardly mesh comes is to go beyond the data we have reviewed, and so we
with the goals and efforts of the self-esteem movement. It confine such reflections to a final, overtly speculative section,
would require that interventions be aimed at lowering some which is presented next.
people’s self-esteem, even while boosting others’. In fact,
given the evidence cited earlier that self-esteem is mildly in-
flated in the modern American population, the pursuit of accu- Concluding Reflections
rate self-esteem might well entail lowering self-esteem more Our views on the merits of boosting self-esteem have gone
than raising it. Conceivably, however, a new emphasis on culti- through multiple changes, and were further revised during the
vating accurate self-understanding would pay off in terms of process of compiling this review. We conclude by offering our
better choices. Then again, if high self-esteem produces happi- current view, with frank acknowledgment that it should be re-
ness, the relative value of happiness versus better choices based garded more as informed expert opinion than as an unassail-
on accurate information could also be debated. As scientists, able summary of proven facts.
we are inclined to favor the pursuit of truth above all else, but In some ways, the grandfather of the self-esteem movement
we can recognize that some people might prefer self-flattering was Carl Rogers, who promoted the idea of “unconditional
illusions over accurate knowledge. positive regard” as a way of helping children avoid the feeling
that their parents might stop loving them if they failed to per-
form up to high standards. Sadly, over time unconditional posi-
Implications for Policy tive regard has taken the form of suggesting that parents and
Ultimately, should our society try to boost people’s self-esteem? teachers should never criticize children and indeed should
A case can be made for either answer. On the positive side, praise children even for mediocre or trivial accomplishments,
high self-esteem does have more benefits than costs, even if or just for being themselves. Always praising and never criti-
both are limited. If it produces happiness, initiative, and resil- cizing may feel good to everyone concerned, but the data we
ience, those are certainly positive outcomes that any parent have reviewed do not show that such an approach will produce
might wish for his or her child. On the negative side, it is not desirable outcomes.
clear that simply boosting self-esteem will in turn produce a We have already indicated what the data do show. They sug-
lasting increase in happiness, initiative, resilience, or any other gest that the benefits of high self-esteem are far fewer and
desirable outcome. There is even the possibility that boosting weaker than proponents of self-esteem had hoped. Still, there
self-esteem will end up fostering narcissism or one of the other are some benefits, and the costs to the individual do not out-
socially undesirable forms of high self-esteem. weigh them. The possible costs to society, such as from having
In our view, a crucial issue for both research and policy is some people regard themselves as superior to others and hence
the heterogeneity of high self-esteem. Only a few of the many entitled to exploit their fellows or demand preferential treat-

38 VOL. 4, NO. 1, MAY 2003



ment, may be another matter. Even so, these costs are associ- socially, culturally, and occupationally. We encourage linking
ated with only particular subcategories of high self-esteem. self-esteem to learning and improvement. Learning is most ef-
The heterogeneity of high self-esteem is central to our fective when one receives both praise and criticism, contingent
thinking, and it suggests that self-esteem per se is the wrong on current performance. The praise-only regimen of the self-
focus. There are many ways to think well of oneself, and some esteem movement is ultimately no more effective for learning
of these produce more desirable outcomes than others. Even than the criticism-only regimen of the previous era (although
such leaders of the self-esteem movement as Nathaniel Branden praise-only may feel much more pleasant for all concerned).
have begun to speak of the need for self-esteem to be linked in Praise that bolsters self-esteem in recognition of good perfor-
particular ways to other aspects of life (such as moral virtue or mance can be a useful tool to facilitate learning and further im-
legitimate achievement). To them, perhaps, this strategy is a prove performance in the future. Praising all the children just
matter of cultivating genuine self-esteem instead of other forms. for being themselves, in contrast, simply devalues praise and
To us, all favorable views of self may be genuine self-esteem, confuses the young people as to what the legitimate standards
and so self-esteem is inherently too broad a focus. are. In the long run, if such indiscriminate praise has any effect
Thus, we recommend that instead of trying to find the right on self-esteem, it seems more likely to contribute to narcissism
“kind” of self-esteem and perhaps dismissing other kinds as or other forms of inflated self-esteem than to the kind of self-
unreal, policymakers and practitioners should seek the right us- esteem that will be best for the individual and for society.
age of self-esteem. High self-esteem feels good and fosters ini- A focus on improvement, in particular, allows people to
tiative. It may still prove a useful tool to promote success and compare themselves against themselves so that they do not
virtue, but it should be clearly and explicitly linked to desirable have to boost themselves at the expense of others. Improve-
behavior. After all, Hitler had very high self-esteem and plenty ment strikes us as the ideal condition for boosting self-esteem:
of initiative, too, but those were hardly guarantees of ethical As the person performs or behaves better, self-esteem is en-
behavior. He attracted followers by offering them self-esteem couraged to rise, and the net effect will be to reinforce both
that was not tied to achievement or ethical behavior—rather, he good behavior and improvement. Those outcomes are condu-
told them that they were superior beings simply by virtue of cive to both the happiness of the individual and the betterment
being themselves, members of the so-called Master Race, an of society.
idea that undoubtedly had a broad, seductive appeal. We have
found no data to indicate that indiscriminately promoting self- Acknowledgments—We gratefully acknowledge financial support from
esteem in today’s children or adults, just for being themselves, the National Institutes of Health (Grants MH 57039 and MH 12794), the
has any benefits beyond that seductive pleasure. Foundations’ Fund for Research in Psychiatry, and the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada. We are indebted to Karyn Cirino
Hence, we think self-esteem should be used in a limited way for preparing the reference list.
as one of a cluster of factors to promote positive outcomes. It
should not be an end in itself. Raising self-esteem will not by
itself make young people perform better in school, obey the
law, stay out of trouble, get along better with their fellows, or
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