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

94 SELF-ESTEEM RESEARCH, THEORY, AND PRACTICE& Epstein, 1983, 1988). Other work supporting the process nature ofself-esteem can be found in programs that are aimed at modifying it(Bednar & Peterson, 1995; Frey et al., 1992; Hakim-Larson & Mruk,1997; Pope, McHale & Craighead, 1988). In addition, we also saw thatself-esteem is flexible enough to undergo development naturally such asin the case of particularly powerful self-esteem moments that can alterself-esteem quite suddenly. In sum, we may say that self-esteem is aprocess early in life and then becomes a fairly stable developmental product.Even so, there are times when its character as a process becomes figuralagain such as when we make transitions between major times of lifeor when it challenges us in particularly powerful ways.Self-Esteem as a Variable?From the 1970s through most of the 1980s, the link between self-esteemand behavior was so widely assumed that people did not pay much attentionto it: They “knew” self-esteem was an important if not crucial variablein human behavior. The next decade saw people questioning thestrength of that relationship and finding it so lacking that the value of theconcept itself came into doubt (Baumeister, Smart & Boden, 1996; Emler,2001; Seligman, 1995b). Now even some of the same researchers pointout that one should not be too quick to jump to either conclusion: “Inshort, care must be taken to avoid either overstating or understating thecausal influence of self-esteem” (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger & Vohs,2003, p. 9). One reason for this apparent confusion is that much of theresearch done on the relationship between self-esteem and behavior is onthe basis of work that defines self-esteem largely in terms of worthiness.If self-esteem involves two factors instead of one, for instance, such workcannot establish a cause-and-effect relationship or even show strong statisticalcorrelations, in principle. A partial definition is bound to generatelargely insignificant results because lopsided beginnings usually lead toskewed endings.Another way to go about understanding how self-esteem can act likean independent variable from one point of view and a dependent variablefrom another involves the concept of reciprocity. Instead of looking forlineal causality, some people working from this perspective see selfesteemas a type of self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, Coopersmithsaid, “Although there are undoubtedly variations in the origins of a cyclefrom self-esteem to anxiety, the model of a cyclical, self-reinforcing, selfpropellingsequence seems appropriate once either state has been established”(1967, p. 133). Others use information processing metaphors toexplain the self-fulfilling nature of the relationship between self-esteemand behavior. Here, self-esteem is seen as a form of feedback that plays a