Psychology

Psychology
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STUDY ONE: Self-Esteem Development From Age 14 to 30 Years: A Longitudinal Study
Summary
The research was empirically trying to get to the evaluate how self esteem develops through the various age groups, starting at the adolescent age of 14 year olds to the young adults at the age of 30. It hypothesized that as people grow older from the adolescent age, the self-esteem grows along the physical growth curves. However, there is exponential development of self-esteem during the adolescence age, which slows down in the young adults’ stage of the physical growth cycle (Erol & Orth, 2011). To carry out the study, the independent variables used included age and gender, while the dependent variables included, the income, health, ethnicity, sense of mastery and he ability to take risks. The data was analyzed using the Mplus 6.1 program and it indicated that the Hispanic adolescents had lower self-esteem than that of the blacks and whites. However as they grew into young adulthood, the Hispanics developed their esteem much faster than the whites did, such that by the time they hit 30, they were level with the blacks.
Background
The topic of study, elicits a lot of interest from the fact that at the age of adolescence, people build on the character foundation that will be later in their lives. Particularly, the level of self esteem and the rate of developing the same play a great role in the physical, mental and the economic well being in their adult life. It is therefore important to study the factors that are most likely to alter the outcome of the persons in future.
Hypothesis
Studies that came before this one, suggest that the levels of any persons self esteem, vary with age. According to the studies, at the age of adolescence the self-esteem level develop much faster then slows down towards the young adulthood stage.
Method
The data used in the study was acquired from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, from a sample of 7100 respondents between the age of 14 and 30. The data was then analyzed in relation to the dependent and independent variables using the Mplus 6.1 program. The independent variables included in the study were age and gender, while the dependent variables included, the income, health, ethnicity, sense of mastery and he ability to take risks.
Results
There was not much difference between the males and the females on the aspect of the esteem trajectory, however ethnically, the whites’ self esteem as they approached young adult hood (Erol & Orth, 2011). While that of the Hispanics showed lagged development in adolescence it grew much faster heading into young adulthood to be level with that of the blacks who showed normal development in the study.
Discussion
This study indicates that as time goes by there is a significant; the whites will have less and less self esteem, as it indicates the whites are less confident than other ethnic groups (Erol & Orth, 2011).
Critique
It is interesting to know that, self-esteem development has most significant growth in the adolescent stage, which for most people, is nightmare stage in their life. In connection to the same, the idea of how self-esteem develops between the two genders, considering the massive differences in their biology, was interesting. However, the article does not capture the aspect of faith and religion, which seems to have quite a significant effect in the lives of many people, especially in their young adulthood. Considering the effect, social status has on the confidence of most people. In future though, given the chance to carry out the same research, it would be even more interesting to know how faith and the sexuality of the respondents vary the results.
STUDY TWO: Personality and Obesity across the Adult Life Span
Summary
The research sort to unearth how obesity and the adult life of a person relate, by analyzing the personality traits and relating them to the rate of adiposity. In general people’s personality does play a part in their health. In most of the cases the body weight reflects on the kind of lifestyle and behaviors that the person has and connects to the way we as humans perceive ourselves in relation to the same (Sutin, Ferrucci, Zonderman, & Terracciano, 2011). The sample size in this study was 1988, with data spreading out to 50 years. As the people grow older it was found that their BMI goes on increasing. The relation between BMI and personality was refuted as the study revealed more connection between behavioral, emotional, and cognitive patterns to the personal traits.
Background
Obesity is a topic that has been in the lime light for quite a while now, in children and the adults alike. Most of the factors that are thought to lead to obesity range from personality, genetics to genetic. It is therefore of importance to understand if there is any connection between BMI, personality and obesity in the adult life.
Hypothesis
It is hypothesized that in the adult life as the BMI increases, it leads to an increase the chances to develop obesity.
Method
In this study, a sample of 1988 persons was used, spread over 50 years time. anthropometrics assessments at the tune of 14,531 were carried out and a model of the BMI trajectory was formulated (Sutin et al 2011). This was used to determine if the personality traits did effect any changes.
Results
The results of the study indicated that, there is not any significant relation between the BMI increase in the adults and their personality changes. The personality traits of the respondents were however found to have a close relation to the risks of developing obesity in adulthood.
Discussion
These results and model used in the study therefore can be used in the future to perfect he intervention against obesity in the adults or even applied to the adolescents as a preventive measure.
Critique
The study is very satisfactory on the subject matter, as regards the link between obesity, personality and the BMI. It is very interesting to know that most of the personality behaviors control how our health turns out, since it is linked to the major health risk factors and obesity is one of them. Indicator like our body weight are strong signs of our personality and behaviors , which directly reflect on the way that we perceive ourselves in general in relation to other people. It is not clear though as to why the BMI was not related to the changes in the personality traits. If the personality of the subjects is subject to how they view themselves, then it should easily tie to health risk factors that they are exposed to. That is to say, if the body weight of a person is directly linked to their personality, then it also should be linked to their BMI. Although the research is about obesity and adults life, it should also relate to the elements of the respondents childhood life. This way it would be easy to tell if the subjects were likely to develop obesity. There have been a lot of studies in the recent past that seem to suggest that the obesity that is cited throughout the country could be related to the way the persons were brought up as children. When studying the adults, therefore it would be important to known if these respondents were exposed to such, or they are purely developing obesity due to personality change in their adulthood. The results showed that the obese persons are most of the time concerned by the welfare of their friends but act less; they are also less open to ideas. They were also found to be less mannered even though they seek a lot of excitement in their life, which could be related to the fact that they are not satisfied with who they are and what other people think about them. Across the board of the independent variables of sex, age, ethnicity or even education, the results were the same. The individuals who were found to have the highest likelihood of being obese were those that had the highest levels of Extraversion and Neuroticism. The individuals were also found to have low agreeableness and low self discipline hence high impulsiveness. Other than the fact that these factors lead to high adiposity, they are also very likely to partake smoking, or abuse other hard drugs in general. All this is very consistent with several other studies that have been carried out in the past, explaining why it is that the obese people also have problems with their social lives. However, it would be even more insightful to evaluate the role that genetics play in adults’ obesity risks.
STUDY THREE: The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest
Summary
This study seeks to illustrate how dishonesty can be bred by creativity. When people develop creative minds, they tend to justify their deeds even though they are wrong leading to unethical practices. Five cases are used to illustrate how on average the creative people lie most of the time as compared to less creative minds. The results indicate the creative minds are more dishonest and worse still try to justify their lies. This clearly illustrates the dark side of having a creative mind (Gino & Ariely, 2012).
Background
For every individual, organizations and even societies, creativity is a virtual they all want for themselves. To most people therefore it is thought to be a good thing to have, this study, however tries to refute that it is as good as everyone wants to see it and possess it.
Hypothesis
This study hypothesizes that creativity has a dark side, which is a disposition from what every individual organization or society believes.
Method
Five sets of studies were carried out, all with different subjects. All of the respondents were students from local universities who were paid to take part in the study. They all had completed intelligence and creativity online surveys. The test basically involved assessing their perpetual skills, general knowledge and problem solving capabilities, all of which were put together for convenience (Gino & Ariely, 2012). The tests were randomized to provide the candidates with the opportunity o cheat.
Results
The results showed significant relation between the three personalities of a creative mind. The relationship between the three personalities of creativity also had a positive relationship with the level of dishonesty.
Discussion
From the study result, it is easy to conclude that the most creative people are the most like persons that will be dishonest, while the least creative were not likely to cheat and furthermore justify their unethical behavior.
Critique
This study helps shed more light in the question that has been in the thought of many researchers regarding cheating. As it illustrates, there is a very likely chance that creative people are the most likely to cheat or be dishonest. It is also very interesting to know that the most creative minds find it much easier to justify unethical behavior, which ends up promoting their level of dishonesty. It would therefore be right to say that, one’s level of creativity strips them of their moral decency without their knowledge. This is because, even after acting unethical, they go ahead and justify the act and still feel moral about it. However it is not clear whether it can be used to explain why humans find it easy to lie, rather than tell the truth even with the social norms in mind (Gino & Ariely, 2012). One part that I don’t like about the research is the fact that it does not also relate to the inherent abilities of all humans. Previous studies have illustrated that the humans have the inherent ability to be good or bad, but mostly they choose to be good. This is because they feel good when other people do good things to them and by extension they want to do good things to them too. When one is lied to they feel bad and used, by extension then, man should lie even less to the people that they love, regardless of their level of creativity. The study would be more intriguing if in future they can actually determine the inherent reason as to why people cheat. As mentioned in the first article, it would also be very intriguing to know if factors like one faith or religion do have a part to play in this bit of morality.

References
Erol, R, Y.&Orth, U. (2011). Self-Esteem Development from Age 14 to 30 Years: A Longitudinal Study. Retrieved from  HYPERLINK "/pubs/journals/releases/psp-101-3-607.pdf" /pubs/journals/releases/psp-101-3-607.pdf
Gino, F. & Ariely, D.(2012) The Dark Side of Creativity: Original Thinkers Can Be More Dishonest. Retrieved from  HYPERLINK "/pubs/journals/releases/psp-102-3-445.pdf" /pubs/journals/releases/psp-102-3-445.pdf
Sutin,A, R. Ferrucci,L. Zonderman,A,B. & Terracciano,A.(2011). Personality and Obesity across the Adult Life Span. Retrieved from /pubs/journals/releases/psp-101-3-579.pdf
Link to STUDY ONE : HYPERLINK "/pubs/journals/releases/psp-101-3-607.pdf"/pubs/journals/releases/psp-101-3-607.pdf
Self-Esteem Development From Age 14 to 30 Years: A Longitudinal Study
Ruth Yasemin Erol and Ulrich Orth
University of Basel
We examined the development of self-esteem in adolescence and young adulthood. Data came from the
Young Adults section of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which includes 8 assessments across a 14-year period of a national probability sample of 7,100 individuals age 14 to 30 years. Latent growthcurve analyses indicated that self-esteem increases during adolescence and continues to increase more slowly in young adulthood. Women and men did not differ in their self-esteem trajectories. In adolescence, Hispanics had lower self-esteem than Blacks and Whites, but the self-esteem of Hispanics subsequently increased more strongly, so that at age 30 Blacks and Hispanics had higher self-esteem than Whites. At each age, emotionally stable, extraverted, and conscientious individuals experienced higher self-esteem than emotionally unstable, introverted, and less conscientious individuals. Moreover, at eachage, high sense of mastery, low risk taking, and better health predicted higher self-esteem. Finally, theresults suggest that normative increase in sense of mastery accounts for a large proportion of thenormative increase in self-esteem.
Keywords:self-esteem, adolescence, young adulthood, development, Big Five personality traits
Low self-esteem in adolescence and young adulthood is a riskfactor for negative outcomes in important life domains. For example, Trzesniewski et al. (2006) found that low self-esteem duringadolescence predicts poorer mental and physical health, worseeconomic well-being, and higher levels of criminal activity inyoung adulthood. Similarly, other studies found that low selfesteem prospectively predicts antisocial behavior, eating disturbances, depression, and suicidal ideation (Donnellan, Trzesniewski, Robins, Moffitt, & Caspi, 2005; McGee & Williams, 2000;Orth, Robins, & Roberts, 2008). Research findings thus suggestthat the development of self-esteem—which is defined as “a person’s appraisal of his or her value” (Leary & Baumeister, 2000, p.2)—may have significant consequences for life outcomes. However, the normative pattern of self-esteem development and thefactors that affect it are still unclear. In the present study, wetherefore aimed to clarify the trajectory of self-esteem duringadolescence and young adulthood and to identify moderating factors of the level and shape of the trajectory.
Self-Esteem Development in Adolescenceand Young Adulthood
With regard to adolescence, previous research on self-esteemdevelopment has yielded inconsistent results. Several studies reported an increase in self-esteem (Cairns, McWhirter, Duffy, &Barry, 1990; Huang, 2010; Labouvie, Pandina, White, & Johnson,1990; McCarthy & Hoge, 1982; Mullis, Mullis, & Normandin,1992; O’Malley & Bachman, 1983; Prawat, Jones, & Hampton,1979; Pullmann, Allik, & Realo, 2009; Roeser & Eccles, 1998;Twenge & Campbell, 2001), whereas other studies reported thatself-esteem does not change (Chubb, Fertman, & Ross, 1997;Young & Mroczek, 2003) or even decreases (KeltikangasJa¨rvinen, 1990; McMullin & Cairney, 2004; Robins, Trzesniewski,Tracy, Gosling, & Potter, 2002; Zimmerman, Copeland, Shope, &Dielman, 1997).
With regard to young adulthood, the few available longitudinalstudies suggest that self-esteem increases during young adulthood(Galambos, Barker, & Krahn, 2006; Huang, 2010; Orth, Trzesniewski, & Robins, 2010; but see Donnellan, Trzesniewski, Conger,& Conger, 2007). Additional evidence is provided by crosssectional data, likewise suggesting that self-esteem gradually increases during young adulthood (Gove, Ortega, & Style, 1989;Pullmann et al., 2009; Robins et al., 2002; Twenge & Campbell,
2001; with the exception of McMullin and Cairney, 2004, whoreported a gradual decrease).
Moderators of Self-Esteem Development
In addition to tracking the average self-esteem trajectory, thisresearch examined factors that may explain individual differencesin self-esteem development in adolescence and young adulthood(cf. Harter, 2006; Robins & Trzesniewski, 2005). We tested for theeffects of demographic variables (gender and ethnicity), the Big
Five personality traits, sense of mastery, risk taking, health, andincome.
Gender
Previous research on gender differences in self-esteem suggeststhat male adolescents have higher self-esteem than female adolescents do (Chubb et al., 1997; Eccles et al., 1989; Labouvie et al.,
This article was published Online First July 4, 2011.Ruth Yasemin Erol and Ulrich Orth, Department of Psychology, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.This research was supported by Swiss National Science FoundationGrant PP00P1-123370 to Ulrich Orth.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ruth
Yasemin Erol, Department of Psychology, University of Basel, Birmannsgasse 8, 4055 Basel, Switzerland. E-mail: HYPERLINK "mailto:[email protected]"[email protected]Journal of Personality and Social Psychology © 2011 American Psychological Association2011, Vol. 101, No. 3, 607– 619 0022-3514/11/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0024299
6071990; McMullin & Cairney, 2004; Moksnes, Moljord, Espnes, &Byrne, 2010; Robins et al., 2002; Roeser & Eccles, 1998; Twenge
& Campbell, 2001; Young & Mroczek, 2003); however, in somestudies the gender difference was small (Kling, Hyde, Showers, &Buswell, 1999; Quatman, Sampson, Robinson, & Watson, 2001)or nonsignificant (Keltikangas-Ja¨rvinen, 1990). Likewise, severalstudies reported higher self-esteem for men in young adulthood(McMullin & Cairney, 2004; Robins et al., 2002; Twenge &Campbell, 2001), although in some studies the gender differencewas small (Orth et al., 2010; Robins, Hendin, & Trzesniewski,2001) or nonsignificant (Donnellan et al., 2007; Galambos et al.,2006).
Ethnicity
With regard to ethnicity, the available evidence suggests thatBlacks have higher self-esteem than Whites do during adolescenceand young adulthood (Bachman, O’Malley, Freedman-Doan,Trzesniewski, & Donnellan, 2010; Gray-Little & Hafdahl, 2000;Robins et al., 2002; Twenge & Crocker, 2002). However, there areconflicting findings regarding the self-esteem of Hispanics. Somestudies reported that Whites have higher self-esteem than Hispanics do in adolescence and young adulthood (Bachman et al., 2010;Carlson, Uppal, & Prosser, 2000; Twenge & Crocker, 2002),whereas Birndorf, Ryan, Auinger, and Aten (2005) found that,among female adolescents, Hispanics reported higher self-esteemthan Whites did (for male adolescents, the difference was nonsignificant).
Big Five Personality Traits
Although prior research examined correlations between selfesteem and the Big Five personality traits, no previous study testedfor the effects of the Big Five on self-esteem development. Crosssectional research suggests that self-esteem is correlated with eachof the Big Five personality traits: Individuals with high self-esteemtend to be emotionally stable, extraverted, conscientious, agreeable, and open to experience (Robins, Hendin, & Trzesniewski,2001; Robins, Tracy, Trzesniewski, Potter, & Gosling, 2001; Watson, Suls, & Haig, 2002). Therefore, it is possible that the Big Fivefactors also explain individual differences in the development ofself-esteem.
Sense of Mastery
Sense of mastery is defined as the extent to which people seethemselves as having control over the forces that affect their lives(Pearlin, Menaghan, Lieberman, & Mullan, 1981) and is related tothe construct of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977; Gecas, 1989). Therehas been a long debate on the relation between self-esteem andself-efficacy (e.g., Chen, Gully, & Eden, 2004; Judge, Erez, Bono,& Thoresen, 2002). Lightsey, Burke, Ervin, Henderson, and Yee(2006) found support for the hypothesis that self-efficacy prospectively predicts self-esteem but not, vice versa, that self-esteemprospectively predicts self-efficacy. Given the conceptual overlapbetween self-efficacy and sense of mastery, we expected that senseof mastery would predict self-esteem development.
Risk Taking
Another possible moderator of self-esteem development is risktaking. The available evidence suggests that risk taking increasesduring adolescence and then decreases during young adulthood(Boyer, 2006; Leather, 2009; Michael & Ben-Zur, 2007). Wild,Flisher, Bhana, and Lombard (2004) examined the relation between self-esteem and risk behaviors related to substance use,bullying, suicidality, and sexuality and found a complex pattern ofresults. Self-esteem in the family and school domain was negatively linked to risk behaviors, whereas self-esteem in the peerdomain was positively linked to risk behaviors in both male andfemale adolescents. Moreover, low body image was associatedwith risk behaviors in female but not male adolescents.
Health
Previous research suggests that self-esteem is associated withbetter physical health (Benyamini, Leventhal, & Leventhal, 2004;Ma¨kikangas, Kinnunen, & Feldt, 2004). As yet, only one longitudinal study has examined whether health predicts self-esteem;Reitzes and Mutran (2006) found support for a reciprocal prospective relation between health and self-esteem. It is possible thatindividuals with high self-esteem experience more social inclusion, receive more social support, and experience less stress,thereby enhancing their health. However, it is also plausible thathealthy individuals have more control over their lives and are moresuccessful in education, work, and relationships, which in turnwould strengthen their self-esteem.
Income
Income might influence self-esteem development because itmay shape the individual’s perception of his or her relational valueand thereby influence self-esteem (Leary & Baumeister, 2000). Atpresent, few studies have systematically examined relations between income and self-esteem. Using cross-sectional data from alarge sample, McMullin and Cairney (2004) found that income hadsignificant effects in midlife and old age but not in adolescenceand young adulthood. Additional evidence accrues from studies onthe relation between self-esteem and socioeconomic status (SES),for which income is one of the key indicators. A meta-analysisfound that SES accounts for small but significant differences inself-esteem in young adulthood (Twenge & Campbell, 2002). Asimilar pattern emerged in the study by Robins et al. (2002), whofound a small SES effect on self-esteem.
The Present Research
Our first goal was to examine the normative self-esteem trajectory in adolescence and young adulthood and to test which ofseveral growth curve models (i.e., linear, quadratic, and cubic)yields the best fit to the data. We expected, based on the findingsof previous studies, that self-esteem would continuously increaseduring adolescence and young adulthood, but we had no specifichypothesis with regard to the shape of the trajectory (i.e., whetherit is linear or curvilinear). Our second goal was to test for moderators of the self-esteem trajectory: gender, ethnicity, the Big Fivepersonality traits, sense of mastery, risk taking, health, and income.On the basis of previous research as reviewed above, we expectedthat, in particular, emotional stability, extraversion, conscientiousness, sense of mastery, and health would predict a more positiveself-esteem trajectory.
608 EROL AND ORTH
This research extends previous studies in several ways. First, weused data from a large national probability sample, which enabledus to draw more accurate and generalizable conclusions. Second,the data set includes eight repeated assessments over a 14-yearperiod. Compared with previous longitudinal studies, which werebased on a small number of repeated assessments, this approachprovides for more precise estimates of the average self-esteemtrajectory and allows testing more complex models (e.g., a cubicmodel) of the self-esteem trajectory, Third, no previous study hastested for the predictive effects of Big Five personality traits, senseof mastery, and risk taking on the self-esteem trajectory.
Method
The data come from the Young Adults section of the NationalLongitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), a national probabilitysurvey that was started in 1979 and that included an oversamplingof Blacks and Hispanics (for further information about this study,see Center for Human Resource Research, 2009). The YoungAdults section includes data from the children of study participants, who were first assessed in 1994 if they had reached the ageof 15 years. These adolescents and young adults were assessedbiennially from 1994 to 2008, resulting in eight waves of assessment. Because at every wave additional children reached the age of15 years and thus became eligible for assessment, the sample sizeincreased with every assessment (Ns ranged from 979 in 1994 to6,309 in 2008). Across Waves 1 to 8, the participants’ ages rangedfrom 14 to 37 years.
1
We restructured the data so that they wereorganized by the individuals’ age. Because few participants provided data above age 30, we restricted our analyses to assessmentsbetween age 14 and age 30.
Participants
The sample consisted of 7,100 individuals (49% female). Theparticipants’ year of birth ranged from 1970 to 1993. Of theparticipants, 37% were White, 32% were Black, 20% were Hispanic, and 11% were from other ethnicities (i.e., 2% AmericanIndian, 0.4% Asian American, and the remaining participants wereof other or unspecified ethnicity). To investigate the potentialimpact of attrition, we compared the participants who did and didnot participate in the most recent wave of data collection (i.e.,Wave 8). The two groups did not significantly differ on any of thestudy variables.
MeasuresSelf-esteem. Self-esteem was assessed with the 10-itemRosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965), a commonlyused and well-validated measure of self-esteem (cf. Blascovich &Tomaka, 1991; Robins, Hendin, & Trzesniewski, 2001). Responses were measured with a 4-point scale ranging from 1(strongly disagree)to4(strongly agree), with a mean of 3.25(SD0.42) averaged across the assessments. The alpha reliabilityranged from .85 to .88 across assessments. Self-esteem was assessed at all eight waves.
Big Five personality traits.
The Big Five personality traitswere assessed with the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI;Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003), a brief measure that hassatisfactory convergent and predictive validity (Ehrhart et al.,2009; Furnham, 2008). Extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience are eachassessed with two items. Responses were measured with a 7-pointscale ranging from 1 (disagree strongly)to7(agree strongly).
Coefficient alpha is not an appropriate indicator of reliabilitybecause the TIPI was not constructed with the goal of internalconsistency but rather with the goal of broad coverage and optimized content validity (Gosling et al., 2003). Therefore, each ofthe subscales includes two items that capture distinct aspects of theBig Five dimension, necessarily resulting in lower internal consistency. In the present data, the mean alpha reliability was .25 acrossubscales and assessments, corresponding to relatively low alphavalues reported by Gosling et al. (2003) and Ehrhart et al. (2009).
However, the test–retest reliability of the TIPI has been found to besatisfactory (with a mean of .72 across a 6-week interval; seeGosling et al., 2003). The TIPI was included in the NLSY79 at twowaves only (2006 and 2008). Because no participant provided dataat more than one assessment (by reason of study design; i.e., theTIPI was given to distinct subsamples), it was not possible to usethe Big Five variables as time-varying covariates (TVCs). Therefore, we used the Big Five as time-invariant covariates in theanalyses.
Sense of mastery. Sense of mastery was assessed with theseven-item Pearlin–Schooler Mastery Scale (Pearlin & Schooler,1978), a well-established scale that measures the extent to whichindiv...