Staking your self-worth on success: Developmental trajectories, consequences and antecedents of contingent self-esteem.

Research on self-esteem, to date, has mainly focused on level of self-esteem (LSE). Recently, there is increasing awareness of other aspects of individuals self-esteem. One such aspect is contingent self-esteem (CSE), which refers to the extent to which ones self-esteem depends on meeting certain internal or external criteria. Although several recent studies point to the negative consequences of having high levels of CSE, important gaps remain. This project aims to contribute to this rapidly growing research by focusing on several understudied goals. As one of the main goals, we aim to study the longitudinal effect of CSE on adolescent levels of depression and anxiety, taking adolescents LSE and personality into account. Additionally, we will investigate whether these relations are influenced by negative stressors. Another important goal is to examine the antecedent role of psychological control and conditional regard in the development of adolescent CSE.

Keywords:Contingent self-esteem, Self-esteem, Depressive symptoms, Anxiety, Psychological control, Conditional regard

Disciplines:Biological and physiological psychology, General psychology, Other psychology and cognitive sciences