Premium
The Costs of Seeking Self–Esteem
Author(s) -
Crocker Jennifer
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/1540-4560.00279
Subject(s) - psychology , self esteem , social psychology , self worth , competence (human resources) , mental health , aggression , ethnically diverse , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , psychiatry , medicine , environmental health , population
Americans are deeply engaged in the pursuit of self–esteem, attempting to satisfy contingencies or criteria for what makes a person worthwhile. In this article, I examine the costs of this pursuit of self–esteem for the self, in terms of competence, relatedness, and mental health, and for others. I hypothesize that external contingencies of self–worth require validation from others and are unreliable as a basis of self–esteem, and hence are associated with greater costs. Data from a longitudinal study of an ethnically diverse sample of 642 college freshman support the view that contingencies of self–worth shape how students spend their time, and the prediction that external contingencies of self–worth, especially appearance, have high costs for stress, aggression, drug and alcohol use, and symptoms of disordered eating.