Self‐esteem: a behavioural genetic perspective

Abstract

Self-esteem, the affective or evaluative appraisal of one's self, is linked with adaptive personality functioning: high self-esteem is associated with psychological health benefits (e.g. subjective well-being, absence of depression and anxiety), effective coping with illness, and satisfactory social relationships. Although several pathways have been hypothesized to effect within-family transmission of self-esteem (e.g. parenting style, family relationship patterns), we focus in this article on genetic influences. Genetic studies on both global and domain-specific self-esteem and on both level and stability of selfesteem converge in showing that (i) genetic influences on self-esteem are substantial, (ii) shared environmental influences are minimal, and (iii) non-shared environmental influences explain the largest amount of variance in self-esteem. We advocate that understanding of current issues in self-esteem research will be enriched by including behavioural genetic approaches.

Dose Self-Esteem Mediates the Association Between Personality Traits and Happiness? A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

“…Self-esteem is the most commonly studied personality concept in psychology and has been examined from various perspectives such as biological, socioeconomic and cultural factors (Naderi, Abdullah, Aizan, Sharir, & Kumar, 2009;Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2002).…”

Executive Self, Self-Esteem, and Negative Affectivity: Relations at the Phenotypic and Genotypic Level.

“…Interest in the self has a long history (James, 1890(James, /1955Mead, 1934;Rosenberg, 1965), and research on the self shows little sign of waning (Baumeister & Vohs, 2004;Leary & Tangney, 2003;Sedikides & Gregg, 2003). Knowledge about the self has been augmented more recently by biologically oriented approaches, such as work on links between the prefrontal cortex and processes involved in selfregulation (Davidson & Irwin, 1999) and work pertaining to genetic influences on self-esteem (Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2002). Our investigation complements and extends these approaches by focusing on both phenotypic and genotypic analyses of the self.…”

Genetic and environmental factors affecting self-esteem from age 14 to 17: a longitudinal study of Finnish twins

“…Recently, several studies have challenged this traditional view, demonstrating that genetic factors play a significant role in the etiology of self-esteem (Kendler et al 1998, Kamakura et al 2001, Neiss et al 2002, with heritability estimates varying from 0.29 to 0.40. Roy et al (1995) assessed heritability of self-esteem within time in adult female twins.…”