Self-Esteem Research, Theory, and Practice Toward a Positive ...

Major Self-Esteem Research Findings 93They also found that the developmental course of self-esteem wasfairly predictable. This work suggests that self-esteem is more of a traitthan state, just as with many personality characteristics.Harter has studied the development of self-esteem longer and inmore depth than any other researcher of whom I am aware. For example,Harter (1999) traced the development of the self and self-esteem throughPiaget’s entire developmental structure. At each step of the way, sheobtained empirical measures of self-esteem using aged-based assessmentscales she and her colleagues developed. Harter found that although eachof us goes through the stages in an individual fashion, a general trendemerges. First, early forms of self-esteem develop to fairly high levels inmost children, perhaps because of the child’s inability to see much beyondtheir own point of view. Then, self-esteem levels off or drops somewhatas children move into middle childhood, probably because their cognitivedevelopment makes possible more realistic comparisons and appraisals.Next, most people experience a significant drop in early adolescence,which may reflect adjustments to puberty and the structure of schools.Self-esteem then seems to increase steadily throughout late adolescenceand the 20s. Finally, self-esteem appears to remain fairly high and stablefor the next several decades and then eventually tends to decline with age.Thus, self-esteem can be seen as a product that is created by the outcomeof various developmental forces associated with age.Yet, there are also two ways of making a convincing argument forunderstanding self-esteem as an ongoing process as well. One is that theparticular areas that we tend to evaluate ourselves on change somewhatover time. For example, although Harter (1999) tracked self-esteem overmost of the life cycle, she found that it was necessary to modify thedomains of self-esteem her scales assessed, depending on age. Scholasticcompetence is relevant up through the early college years, for instance,but becomes replaced by job competence, which reflects a change in prioritiesand opportunities. Other domains were dropped and some wereadded, showing that self-esteem does have some variability over time.Interestingly enough, she found that physical appearance was the onlydomain of self-esteem that ran throughout the life cycle. For the mostpart, then, this aspect of self-esteem means that (1) people are boundto have new opportunities to increase self-esteem in life (or decrease it,as the case may be); and (2) no one can predict how a particular personwill act or react in response to the specific challenges that each domainbrings.Another indication of change occurs in clinical work, an area that Ifeel is often understudied in scholarly and academically oriented materialon self-esteem. However, it has been examined in relation to treating suchproblems as substance abuse, anxiety, depression, and so forth (O’Brien