ABSTRACT
The origins of and developmental influences on self-esteem have fascinated generations of psychologists. A century of theorizing and research has resulted in a broad consensus that self-esteem is the joint product of (1) reflective self-eυaluations, and (2) the appraisals of others. The first of these notions can be traced to William James, who wrote that:
our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities; a fraction of which our pretensions are the denominator and the numerator our success: thus, Self-esteem = Success / Pretensions. Such a fraction may be increased as well by diminishing the denominator as by increasing the numerator.
(James, 1890, pp. 310–311)