LEARNING OUTCOME 11.2 Explain how the sense of self develops during adolescence and describe how
self-esteem is affected by adolescence.
During adolescence, the idea of self or self-concept becomes more complex and abstract, in line with
formal operational thought. In middle childhood, children form disconnected, relatively separate impressions
about themselves based on characteristics such as their athletic ability, popularity or capabilities as
a student. These aspects of self are understood in concrete terms, and often include comparisons with
others. For example, a nine-year-old boy might describe himself in terms of his achievements, saying,
‘I’m the best maths student in my class’. In adolescence, however, teenagers selectively accept or reject
the many different aspects of self acquired during childhood, forming a more coherent and integrated
sense of self which contains qualifiers. Thus, at age 15, the boy who saw himself as the best maths student
is more likely to say ‘I’m good at maths, but I’m certainly not the best maths student that ever
was!’ An adolescent’s increasing capacity for abstract thought plays a central role in the process of selfunderstanding;
so, teenagers often define themselves in terms of their current ideology, such as ‘I’m an
animal liberationist’ or I’m an environmentalist’. This type of self-description reflects the adolescent’s
shift from childhood social comparison as a basis for self-concept, to a more internalised and absolute
self-view based on abstract principles, values and moral stances (Damon & Hart, 1988; Harter, 1989;
Harter & Monsour, 1992; Shapka & Keating, 2005).
Unlike children who are at the concrete operational stage of cognitive development, adolescents are
able to view themselves from different perspectives, and can distinguish their own self-view from the view
that other people might have of them. This multiple perspective-taking in relation to self is consistent with
formal operational thought, in which individuals are able to recognise several viewpoints on many issues.
This new ability in perspective-taking forms the basis of adolescent egocentrism, and manifests itself in
the personal fable and the imaginary audience (Elkind, 1978).
Perspective-taking also allows teenagers to recognise, for the first time, inconsistencies in their own
qualities and conflicts between various aspects of themselves, particularly when interacting with different
people. Each of the many different role-related selves that adolescents experience — such as self with
parents, self with friends, self as a classmate, and self with a girlfriend or boyfriend — contains qualities
that seem to contradict one another. For example, adolescents might feel that they are outgoing with
friends but shy with a romantic partner, or cheerful with friends and depressed with parents.
Teenagers often interpret inconsistencies in self as the difference between their ‘true’ and ‘false’ selves.
Harter, Marold, Whitesell, and Cobbs (1996) asked adolescents what they understood by ‘true’ and ‘false’
selves. Adolescents’ false selves included ‘being phony’, ‘putting on an act’, ‘expressing things you don’t
really believe or feel’, or ‘changing yourself to be something that someone else wants you to be’; whereas
their true selves included ‘the real me inside’, ‘my true feelings’, ‘what I really think and feel’, and
‘behaving the way I want to behave and not how someone else wants me to be’. Harter (2006a) regards
the emergence of false selves as a normal experience, especially during the middle years of adolescence. It
can be a result of social experimentation or as a response to different social circumstances, in which case
it can contribute to a healthy development of self-concept. However, if projecting a false self is seen by the
teenager as necessary to gain social approval, it might be a source of significant confusion and depression.
For example, in Harter and her colleagues’ (1996) study, teenagers who engaged in false self-projection
as a way to experiment with new roles reported more positive feelings about themselves, higher selfworth,
greater hopefulness about the future, and more knowledge of their true selves than teenagers who
engaged in false self-projection to please, impress or win the approval of parents and peers. Moreover,
adolescents who reported high levels of positive support from parents and peers engaged in less false
self-projections than those who experienced lower levels of support. According to Harter (2006a), most
adolescents transcend these problems and emerge at the end of the period with a more sophisticated and
coherent self-picture that is based on an accurate understanding of personal strengths and weaknesses.
Self-esteem
Self-esteem, the evaluative aspect of self, undergoes considerable change during adolescence. Global
self-esteem describes the overall view the individual has of their worth as a person and how satisfied they
feel with themselves (Harter, 1999). Global self-esteem decreases significantly after a peak level is experienced
in late childhood (Robins, Trzesniewski, Tracy, Gosling, & Potter, 2002). This decrease in general
feelings of self-worth is thought to be associated with the transitions that occur during adolescence,
including the onset of puberty and beginning high school. Daily hassles might increase, and the teacher
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support and closeness experienced in primary school often declines in the more impersonal environment
of secondary schools (Seidman, Allen, Aber, Mitchell, & Feinman, 1994). High school also brings
substantial academic challenges and significant realignments in friendship patterns and peer groups, both
of which can negatively influence self-esteem. Dramatic changes in body shape and size associated with
pubertal growth might lead to lower body satisfaction. This can impact global self-esteem significantly,
since body esteem is a substantial contributor to overall feelings of self-worth during adolescence (Frost
& McKelvie, 2004; Harter, 1999). The decrease in self-esteem at adolescence compared to childhood
could also be due to more realistic self-appraisals that are brought about by cognitive advances.
Parenting styles during adolescence are known to influence teenagers’ self-esteem either positively or
negatively. Australian research from the Wollongong Longitudinal Study has linked authoritative parenting
with higher self-esteem in adolescents, with benefits observed in Year 7 persisting through Year 10
(Heaven & Ciarrochi, 2008). These authors argue that children from authoritative homes are better at
setting achievable goals, overcoming obstacles and finding successful paths to such goals, all of which
help to boost self-esteem. Heaven and Ciarrochi have also found evidence that authoritarian parenting
is linked to low self-esteem in Australian adolescents, suggesting that exacting standards and punitive
parental reactions when children do not reach these standards have the effect of undermining self-esteem
in adolescent children of authoritarian parents.
Significant gender differences in global self-esteem emerge during adolescence, with girls experiencing
lower self-esteem than boys. The gender difference in self-esteem is very small during childhood; but,
with the onset of adolescence, differences in global self-esteem for boys and girls become much more
substantial, with an effect size of .33 (Twenge & Campbell, 2001). This difference is associated with
the pubertal decline in self-esteem. Girls’ global self-esteem declines twice as much as boys’ during
this developmental period (Heaven & Ciarrochi, 2008; Kling, Hyde, Showers, & Buswell, 1999; Robins
et al., 2002; Van Houtte, 2005)—a significant trend that has also been reported in cross-cultural research
(Watkins, Dong, & Xia, 1997).
Global self-esteem is made up of an aggregate of domain-specific measures, such as physical
appearance self-esteem, relationship self-esteem and academic self-esteem. Gender differences vary
substantially according to the domain of self-esteem. A meta-analysis by Gentile, Grabe, Dolan-Pascoe,
and Wells (2009) examined self-esteem in 32 486 mainly child and adolescent participants in 115 studies
between 1970 and 2005. The analysis revealed that adolescent males scored higher than females of the
same age in self-esteem domains related to physical appearance and athletics, with small to moderate
effect sizes. Adolescent females scored higher than same-aged males in the domains of behavioural
conduct and morality/ethics, again showing small to moderate effect sizes. The largest gender differences
for adolescents were found in the domains of athletics, physical appearance and morality/ethics. No
significant gender differences were found in the domains of academics, social acceptance, family and
affect. The authors concluded that domain-specific self-esteem is consistently correlated to performances
in that area, with higher self-esteem predicting better performance and vice-versa. Interventions to
improve self-esteem in vulnerable populations, such as teenage girls, need to target specific self-esteem
domains rather than global self-esteem. For example, interventions for low self-esteem related to
appearance in girls need to target appearance-related issues rather than global self-esteem, such as
feeling good about the self in general. So, interventions that emphasise more objective self-appraisals
involving realistic peer feedback rather than impossible media images can be a fruitful avenue.
Several hypotheses have been put forward regarding the apparently more fragile global self-esteem in
adolescent girls compared to their male counterparts. Some authors believe that the gender difference in
self-esteem originates in girls’ greater concern with body image and higher body-image dissatisfaction
(Allgood-Merten, Lewinsohn, & Hops, 1990; Clay, Vignoles, & Dittmar, 2005). In contrast, more recent
research by van den Berg, Mond, Eisenberg, Ackard, and Neumark-Sztainer (2010) found that body
dissatisfaction/self-esteem association was strong and significant in both boys and girls and did not differ
significantly between genders, nor between the middle school and high school cohorts in either boys
or girls.
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As well, body image makes a substantial contribution to global self-esteem, especially during
adolescence and early adulthood (Frost & McKelvie, 2004). Several authors have postulated alternative
explanations for gender differences in adolescents’ self-esteem, involving sex-role effects. Masculinity
measures have been found to be positively related to global self-esteem in both males and females,
whereas femininity scores have a much weaker correlation with self-esteem (Buckley & Carter, 2005;
Mokgatlhe & Schoemen, 1998; Sharpe & Heppner, 1991). With men and boys on average demonstrating
masculinity traits more strongly than women and girls do, it becomes apparent how gender differences
in self-esteem might emerge. Another sex-role explanation involves a conflict between academic
achievement and social success for adolescent girls, who may feel embattled as to whether they can be
both academically successful and attractive to the opposite sex (e.g. Unger, 2001). This perception puts
adolescent girls into a double bind, which, in turn, decreases their feelings of self-worth compared to
boys, who experience comparatively less conflict in this regard. A further sex-role hypothesis cites the
differential involvement of adolescent girls and boys in athletics as a source of the gender differences
found in adolescents’ self-esteem, since athletic competence is a significant contributor to global
self-esteem (Fox et al., 1994).
The contribution of relationships to the observed gender differences in self-esteem has recently been
explored as a possible reason for lower self-worth in adolescent girls. Thomas and Daubman (2001)
examined the impact of friendship quality on US adolescents’ self-esteem and found that the negative
aspects of opposite-sex friendships significantly predicted lower self-esteem for girls but not for boys. It
appears that girls’ self-esteem is vulnerable to the negative impacts of boys’ interpersonal styles, whereas
boys’ self-esteem is not similarly and negatively impacted by their opposite-sex peers, since girls have a
more supportive interpersonal style than boys (Maccoby, 1990).
This boy is proud of his athletic ability while surfing. Sex differences in self-esteem have been linked to differential
involvement in athletics by boys and girls.
Related research with Australian late adolescents and young adults has revealed that romantic relationships
have a differential effect on young men’s and young women’s global self-esteem, with the presence
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of a romantic partner apparently boosting men’s self-esteem, while a romantic partnership did not have a
significant effect on women’s self-esteem.With the ubiquity of romantic relationships during adolescence,
this finding may further explain the gender differences found in self-esteem during this period, with boys
benefiting from the presence of a girlfriend, but girls not experiencing the same sort of boost in self-worth
from having a boyfriend (Rice & Burton Smith, 2008). Studies of global self-esteem and domain-based
self-esteem indicate that gender differences during adolescence are generally fairly modest. Nonetheless,
Kling et al. (1999) note that even a minor difference in self-esteem may initiate a cycle of lowered expectations
and diminished effort in adolescent girls. Thomas and Daubman (2001) argue that in turn this can
have negative consequences in educational and occupational choice, and later socioeconomic attainment.
Thus, even small gender differences in self-esteem should not be ignored or trivialised.
Self-esteem contributes significantly to psychological health (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs,
2005; Heatherton & Wyland, 2003), with research evidence that high self-esteem is a crucial determinant
of coping ability and a sense of wellbeing (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997). Conversely, low self-esteem is
associated with loneliness, anxiety, depression and reduced life satisfaction (Chubb, Fertman, & Ross,
1997; Tomori & Rus-Makovac, 2000). Longitudinal research in New Zealand has indicated that low selfesteem
during adolescence has negative outcomes in early adulthood, including poor physical and mental
health, financial and employment difficulties, and criminality (Trzesniewski et al., 2006).
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