DEVELOPMENTAL CRISIS IN EARLY ADULTHOOD: A ...

The store of self-knowledge provides the basis for self-evaluation. Any selfschema
may be evaluated, and the process involves using a linear scale on which to
judge a self-schema. The schema of one’s body may be evaluated on the linear scale
of thin—fat or beautiful—ugly. One’s performance in a job may be judged on the
scale of success—failure or good—bad. One’s interpersonal actions may be
evaluated on the scale of good—evil or moral—immoral. There are limitless
dimensions upon which to judge the self, and innumerable possible reference groups
against which to compare oneself (Mischel, 1981), therefore self-evaluation can be
manipulated in order to cast oneself in a positive or negative light. It is from our selfevaluation
processes that the appraisals of self-esteem and self-efficacy emerge
(Carver and Scheier, 1998). Self-esteem designates an evaluation of worth, while
self-efficacy relates to evaluations of competence (Bandura, 2001). To have
extremely low confidence or efficacy is to feel useless, to have very low self-esteem is
to feel worthless. Both emerge from dimensions of self-evaluation, and both are
affectively charged.
Sources of self-esteem are culturally embedded, for example evaluations of
one’s body are usually based on a cultural ideal of body image and can have a strong
impact on self-esteem (Hoare & Cosgrove, 1998). Self-esteem will also be based
around evaluations in culturally defined areas of skill, intelligence and talent
(Fleetham, 2006). While a cultural framework will impart an inter-subjective context
to self-evaluations of worth and competence, this does not negate the fact that all selfevaluations
are relative. There is nothing absolute about any self-evaluation – none
are more correct than any other in an absolute sense. All self-evaluations, being
value-judgements made against a subjective standard, are all interpretative and open
to alternative reformulation (Albright, 1994). Linville (1985; 1987) found that people
who have greater self-complexity and therefore have more self schemas to selfevaluate,
are less prone to self-esteem decrease after failure, for when things go badly
in one domain they can identify with positive evaluations on other dimensions to
buffer their self-worth.
Beyond the schemas and evaluations of our actual self are hypothetical
schemas about who we could become as persons. Piaget and his colleagues found
evidence that during adolescence children develop the ability to contextualise reality
within a context of possibility, and when they apply this to the self they develop a set
of “possible selves” (Inhelder and Piaget, 1958). Markus and Nurius (1986)
22