Is high self-esteem beneficial? Revisiting a classic question

Orth, Ulrich; Robins, Richard W. (2022). Is high self-esteem beneficial? Revisiting a classic question. American psychologist, 77(1), pp. 5-17. American Psychological Association 10.1037/amp0000922

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Debates about the benefits of self-esteem have persisted for decades, both in the scientific literature and in the popular press. Although many researchers and lay people have argued that high self-esteem helps individuals adapt to and succeed in a variety of life domains, there is widespread skepticism about this claim. The present article takes a new look at the voluminous body of research (including several meta-analyses) examining the consequences of self-esteem for several important life domains: relationships, school, work, mental health, physical health, and antisocial behavior. Overall, the findings suggest that self-esteem is beneficial in all these domains, and that these benefits hold across age, gender, and race/ethnicity, and controlling for prior levels of the predicted outcomes and potential third variable confounds. The meta-analytic estimates of self-esteem effects (which average .10 across domains) are comparable in size to estimates for other hypothesized causal factors such as self-efficacy, positive emotionality, attachment security, and growth mindset, and larger than some generally accepted pharmaceutical interventions. Discussion focuses on several issues that are critical for evaluating the findings, including the strength of the evidence for making causal inferences, the magnitude of the effects, the importance of distinguishing between self-esteem and narcissism, and the generalizability of the results. In summary, the present findings support theoretical conceptions of self-esteem as an adaptive trait that has wide-ranging influences on healthy adjustment and adaptation, and suggest that interventions aimed at boosting self-esteem might, if properly designed and implemented, benefit individuals and society as a whole. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology
07 Faculty of Human Sciences > Institute of Psychology > Developmental Psychology

UniBE Contributor:

Orth, Ulrich

Subjects:

100 Philosophy > 150 Psychology
000 Computer science, knowledge & systems

ISSN:

0003-066X

Publisher:

American Psychological Association

Language:

English

Submitter:

Pubmed Import

Date Deposited:

01 Apr 2022 10:46

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 16:18

Publisher DOI:

10.1037/amp0000922

Related URLs:

PubMed ID:

35357851

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/168851

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/168851

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