ABSTRACT
Self-esteem is one of the most widely studied constructs in the social sciences and interest in self-esteem unites clinical, developmental, personality, and social psychology. In the last decade, researchers have focused increasingly on the development of self-esteem and are working to achieve consensus about the degree to which self-esteem changes over the life course. The existing evidence indicates that self-esteem shows remarkable rank-order consistency over time, despite the vast array of experiences that impinge upon a lived life. At the same time, average self-esteem levels show systematic and psychologically meaningful changes from one phase of development to the next. In this chapter we review evidence about the development of self-esteem by drawing on recent large-scale studies and meta-analytic findings. We also discuss potential mechanisms underlying patterns of stability and change, and briefly consider intervention and prevention efforts that aim deliberately to change self-esteem.
