The Development of the Self-Concept during the Adolescent Years

Dusek, Jerome B.; Flaherty, John F.; Hill, John P.

doi:10.2307/1166004

Cited by 154 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Issues of ego-identity (Erikson 1959) are resolved in late adolescence, even if only temporarily, as thoughts about the self involve less frequent references to childhood and more frequent references to adulthood. Self-cognitions are reorganized and reintegrated, selfconsciousness wanes, stability of self is restored, and levels of self-esteem rise steadily as individuals move through this developmental period (Bachman et at 1978, Dusek & Flaherty 1981, McCarthy & Hoge 1982, Offer et al 1981, O'Malley & Bachman 1983, Savin-Williams & Demo 1984Simmons & Blyth 1987). Table 1 documents the consistency of the finding that global self-esteem increases through the adolescent years, expectations of others; (iii) increased personal autonomy affords adolescents greater latitude to select activities in which they are interested and to delete roles in which their performance is less satisfactory; and (iv) selfesteem may solidify during adolescence and become less susceptible to evaluations by others.…”

Section: Adolescencementioning

confidence: 99%

The Self-Concept Over Time: Research Issues and Directions

1992

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Although theoretical attention has been devoted to the situational variability of the self-concept, empirical investigations continue to rely on one-shot methodologies. Such efforts assume that data obtained through these methods can be generalized to other situations in the person's life, even to subsequent years or stages in the life course. Self-concept is a structural product of reflexive activity, but it is also susceptible to change as the individual encounters new roles, situations, and life transitions. The data reviewed in this paper suggest that: (i) self-evaluation generally becomes more favorable through the life-span; (ii) self-evaluation is represented by a "moving baseline" from which situational fluctuations emerge; (iii) self-concept is characterized by both stability and change over the life course; and (iv) environmental stability plays an important role in self-concept stability. Several avenues of research are recommended to develop an accurate, meaningful, and testable theory of the self-concept over time. Article: INTRODUCTIONMost researchers view self-concept as a set of structured self-attitudes that is relatively stable and "characteristic" of an individual. While numerous studies have examined structural dimensions of self-concept, very few have focused on temporal aspects of self-concept, i.e. changes in self-concept from one situation to another, from one relationship to another, or from one year or stage in the life course to the next. As a result, little is known about the social conditions responsible for change and stability in self-concept.This review demonstrates that the dominant structural conceptualization of self-concept and the concomitant failure to study the dynamic, changing, emerging qualities of self-concept, are the products of three related and widespread methodological practices in self-concept research: (i) a preoccupation with one-shot measures of self-esteem, (ii) an overreliance on samples of adolescents and college students, and (iii) the tendency to measure self-esteem in detached classroom and experimental situations.The objective of this paper is to integrate social psychological, sociological, and developmental research on self-concept. I argue that to understand self-concept we must conceptualize it as a moving baseline with fluctuations across situations (Demo 1985) and life stages. This involves recognizing that the self-concept is simultaneously a complex structure and a process, that it is stable, but that it is also dynamic. I also argue that to capture the dynamic qualities of self-concept it is necessary to obtain repeated measurements and to include naturalistic observations. I move now to a brief review of the evidence that self-concept has both structural and processual qualities, recognizing that this evidence corresponds to two general models used by self-concept researchers and that different points of view exist within each model. THE STRUCTURAL MODELMany researchers and theorists view self-concept as a multifaceted structure of thoughts, att...

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Section: Adolescencementioning

confidence: 99%

The Self-Concept Over Time: Research Issues and Directions

1992

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“…Studies of average change over time in a sample cannot determine if evidence of no change is due to no real change, or to the offsetting increases and decreases of individuals in the sample on the variable of interest. Correlational studies of stability are also limited because they typically account for less than half of the variation in the variable of interest (Dusek and Flaherty, 1981;O'Malley and Bachman, 1983). This leaves open the possibility that subgroup differences exist.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Longitudinal Study of Self-Esteem: Implications for Adolescent Development

Zimmerman

Copeland

Shope

et al. 1997

Journal of Youth and Adolescence

224

133

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This study used a cluster analytic approach to identify self-esteem trajectories among adolescents over a four-year period from sixth to tenth grades (N = 1,160). Four self-esteem trajectories were identified thai replicated previous research: (1) consistently high, (2) moderate and rising, (3) steadily decreasing, and (4) consistently low. Female adolescents were more likely to be in the steadily decreasing self-esteem group while male adolescents were more likefy to be in the moderate and rising ffoup. African American and white youth were equally distributed across groups. Using repeated measures analysis, we found that youth with consistently high and moderate and rising self-esteem reported developmentalfy healthier outcomes in Grade 10 than youth in the other two clusters. Outcomes included susceptibility to peer pressure, school grades, and alcohol use. Implications of these results for studying self-esteem and developmental change more generally are discussed.

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“…Research on the self-concept during early adolescence has been based on two fundamental premises (Harter, 2012). The first is that the self is a multidimensional phenomenon with two components, the self-concept and the evaluative self (Dusek & Flaherty, 1981;Marsh, Byrne, & Shavelson, 1992;Sebastian et al, 2008). Whereas the selfconcept refers to individuals' perceptions of their functioning in specific domains, the evaluative self refers to a person's overall sense of well-being and adequacy (Pullmann & Allik, 2008).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors Underlying Contextual Variations in the Structure of the Self: Differences Related to SES, Gender, Culture, and “Majority/Nonmajority” Status During Early Adolescence

Santo

Bukowski²,

Stella-Lopez³

et al. 2013

J of Research on Adolesc

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Multilevel modeling was used to examine contextual variations in the structure of the "self" in a sample of 918 lowerand upper-middle class early adolescents (M age = 10.37 years, SD = 1.19) from a "majority" cultural context (i.e., Barranquilla in the Caribbean region of Colombia) and a "nonmajority" context (i.e., Montréal, Québec, Canada). It was expected that the associations between measures of the self-concept (i.e., indices of self-perceived competence) and a measure of general self-worth would differ in majority and nonmajority contexts and would vary as a function of socioeconomic status, the relative emphasis placed on individualism and collectivism and gender. Findings indicate that contextual factors moderated the extent to which self-worth is associated with components of early adolescents' self-concept.

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The Development of the Self-Concept during the Adolescent Years

Cited by 154 publications

References 53 publications

The Self-Concept Over Time: Research Issues and Directions

The Self-Concept Over Time: Research Issues and Directions

A Longitudinal Study of Self-Esteem: Implications for Adolescent Development

Factors Underlying Contextual Variations in the Structure of the Self: Differences Related to SES, Gender, Culture, and “Majority/Nonmajority” Status During Early Adolescence

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