M Kernis Measuring Self Esteem in Context

Measuring Self-Esteem in Context: The

Importance of Stability of Self-Esteem in

Psychological Functioning

Michael H. Kernis

Department of Psychology and

Institute for Behavioral Research

University of Georgia

ABSTRACT

In this article, I report on a research program that has

focused on the joint roles of stability and level of self-esteem in various
aspects of psychological functioning. Stability of self-esteem refers to the
magnitude of short-term ﬂuctuations that people experience in their cur-
rent, contextually based feelings of self-worth. In contrast, level of self-
esteem refers to representations of people’s general, or typical, feelings of
self-worth. A considerable amount of research reveals that self-esteem
stability has predictive value beyond the predictive value of self-esteem
level. Moreover, considering self-esteem stability provides one way to
distinguish fragile from secure forms of high self-esteem. Results from
a number of studies are presented and theoretical implications are
discussed.

Some time ago, I had a dream in which I was shopping for clothes

at a department store. Each time that I tried to put an article of
clothing on, it would not go up past my knees. Now, I am a big person,
so this was fast becoming a very frustrating experience. Soon I con-
cluded that I must be in the wrong department, and I fell back asleep.
Imagine my surprise when I awoke in the morning to ﬁnd my wife’s

Address correspondence to Michael Kernis, Department of Psychology, University

of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, or to mkernis@uga.edu

Journal of Personality

73:6, December 2005

Blackwell Publishing 2005

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00359.x

closet open and, scattered across the ﬂoor laid multiple pairs of her
shorts. I am not recounting this dream because I want readers to im-
agine me wearing women’s clothing as they read this article. No, I am
recounting it to make an important point. That is, just as I was trying
unsuccessfully to cram my big body into my wife’s small shorts, self-
esteem researchers have tried unsuccessfully to incorporate all self-
esteem processes into one aspect of self-esteem, namely its level
(whether it is high or low). This reliance on self-esteem level to ac-
count for the role of self-esteem in psychological and interpersonal
functioning has produced weak, inconsistent, and sometimes contra-
dictory sets of ﬁndings for a wide range of phenomena.

Self-esteem level has been implicated in a vast array of phenomena,

including depression and suicidal ideation (Harter, 1993; Rosenberg,
1985),

loneliness

and

peer

rejection

(Ammerman,

Kazdin,

& Van Hasselt, 1993; East, Hess, & Lerner, 1987), academic achieve-
ment (Hattie, 1992), and life satisfaction (Huebner, 1991) (for a re-
view, see DuBois & Tevendale; 1999). Moreover, self-esteem has
been linked to a wide variety of psychopathologies (Silverstone,
1991). A search of the DSM-IV-TR by O’Brien, Bartoletti, and
Leitzel (in press) revealed that ‘‘the term ‘self-esteem’ appears in 24
different diagnostic contexts, as a criterion for disorders (e.g.,
dysthymia), as a criterion for disorders being considered for inclu-
sion in future DSM editions (e.g., depressive personality disorder),
and as an associated feature of disorders (e.g., social phobia)’’ (p. 1).
This does not include the appearance of over 50 ‘‘self’’ terms that
‘‘have meanings that overlap with self-esteem, including arrogant
self-appraisal, grandiose sense of self, inﬂated self-appraisal, low
self-worth (dirtiness, worthlessness), self-assured (cocky), self-blame,
self-conﬁdence, self-critical, self-deprecation, self-doubts, self-evalu-
ation, and self-reproach. . . . Grandiose high self-esteem is a criterion
used to deﬁne hypomanic and manic episodes, which are diagnostic
when linked to instability of mood in cyclothymic and bipolar disor-
ders

(O’Brien et al., in press).’’

However, despite this presumed centrality of self-esteem to var-

ious aspects of psychological functioning, its precise role, more often
than desired, remains unclear. DuBois and Tevendale (1999) noted
that researchers have found self-esteem to relate positively (Hattie,
1992), as well as negatively (Skaalvik & Hagtvet, 1990), to academic
achievement. In addition, DuBois and Tevendale (1999) noted that

Kernis

conﬂicting ﬁndings have emerged in studies predicting delinquent
behavior and gang involvement (Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996;
Wang, 1994). In addition to the fact that inconsistent ﬁndings plague
self-esteem research, the predictive utility of self-esteem with respect
to psychological health, well-being, and (mal)adaptive behavior gen-
erally is modest, with the majority of variance in these indices left
unaccounted for (DuBois & Tevendale, 1999). A more recent liter-
ature review further substantiates the claim that self-esteem level is
not a strong predictor of objective outcomes such as school achieve-
ment, occupational success, drug abuse, and criminality (Baumeister,
Campbell, Kreuger, & Vohs, 2003). Findings such as these suggest
that self-esteem level, when taken alone, provides an incomplete pic-
ture of the role of self-esteem in psychological and interpersonal
functioning.

Fortunately, in recent years, a growing number of researchers have

begun to incorporate additional aspects of self-esteem into their re-
search and theories. These aspects include implicit self-esteem (Bos-
son, Brown, Zeigler-Hill, & Swann, 2003; Jordan, Spencer, & Zanna,
2002; Pelham, Koole, Hardin, Hetts, Seah, & DeHart, in press), con-
tingent self-esteem (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001; Neighbors, Larimer,
Geisner, & Knee, 2005) and stability of self-esteem (Kernis &
Goldman, 2002; Kernis & Waschull, 1995). In this article, I review
a program of research that my students and I have undertaken to
examine the joint implications of level and stability of self-esteem for
various aspects of psychological and interpersonal functioning. I
begin by discussing some deﬁnitional and measurement issues con-
cerning these two self-esteem components.

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN LEVEL AND STABILITY

OF SELF-ESTEEM

Self-esteem level refers to people’s representations of their typical, or
general, global feelings of self-worth. In our research, we have par-
ticipants complete a standard measure of global self-esteem—for
adults, Rosenberg’s (1965) Self-Esteem Scale; for children, either
Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale or the global self-worth subscale of
Harter’s (1985) Self-Perception Proﬁle for Children—under explicit
instructions to ‘‘base their responses on how they typically, or gener-
ally, feel about themselves.’’ Assessment of self-esteem level usually

Stability of Self-Esteem

takes place in a laboratory or other formal ‘‘testing’’ setting, outside
the context of people’s everyday lives. Thus, self-esteem level reﬂects
people’s representations of how they typically feel about themselves
across time and context. Although these representations can change,
the changes usually occur slowly and over an extended time
period (Rosenberg, 1986). Furthermore, self-esteem level exhibits
considerable rank-order stability, even over many years (Rosenberg,
1986).

In contrast, self-esteem stability refers to the magnitude of short-

term ﬂuctuations that people experience in their contextually based,
immediate feelings of self-worth. In our research, we ask people to
complete a measure of global self-esteem (either Rosenberg’s or Har-
ter’s) once or twice daily for periods ranging from 5 to 7 days, with
instructions to base their responses on how they feel ‘‘at the moment’’
they are completing each form. We then compute the standard devi-
ation of people’s total scores across these multiple assessments: The
greater the standard deviation, the more unstable individuals’ self-
esteem. On Rosenberg’s measure, the response format is 10 dots, an-
chored by the labels ‘‘strongly disagree’’ and ‘‘strongly agree.’’ We did
this to reduce the extent to which people linked their responses to
specific numbers, presumably making it easier for them to give dif-
ferent responses across the multiple assessments.

The major virtue of obtaining multiple assessments of current self-

esteem is that it provides for the measurement of self-esteem stability
in the context of everyday events experienced by individuals. Along
with this ecological validity, however, comes a relative lack of con-
trol over the data collection. Fortunately, our previous research in-
dicates that the quality of data we obtain is high. That is, the vast
majority of participants take the task seriously and complete the
measures at or close to the times we ask them to (as assessed in
extensive individual debriefing sessions).

A BRIEF HISTORY AND THEORY PRESENTATION

(AND DIGRESSION)

I began my research on stability of self-esteem because of what I
believed to be a strong contradiction between data and theory that
existed in the literature on the nature of high self-esteem and its role
in psychological functioning. On the one hand, considerable ﬁndings

Kernis

emerged that purported to demonstrate that individuals with high
self-esteem were highly motivated to protect and enhance their
positive feelings of self-worth even if it meant being overtly self-
serving, self-destructive, or antagonistic toward others. For example,
high self-esteem individuals (1) take great pride in their successes
(‘‘I am highly intelligent’’), but tenaciously deny any responsibility
for their failures (‘‘The instructor designed a very poor test’’) (Fitch,
1970); (2) criticize out-group members who threaten their (or their
group’s) sense of value and worth (Crocker, Thompson, McGraw, &
Ingerman, 1987); and (3) create obstacles to successful performance
that can easily backﬁre (Tice, 1991) just to enhance their sense of
competence should they nonetheless succeed. Other research
demonstrates that, when threatened, high self-esteem individuals
sabotage their own performances in the service of self-esteem
protection. For example, high self-esteem individuals whose egos
are threatened take excessive risks by overestimating their compe-
tence, resulting in unnecessary performance declines (Baumeister,
Heatherton, & Tice, 1993). Findings such as these imply that indi-
viduals with high self-esteem go around leading their lives with a
‘‘defend the fort’’ mentality, tenaciously warding off any and all
potential threats. Importantly, Tennen and Afﬂeck (1993) pointed
out the puzzling nature of these ﬁndings, noting that routine use of
various self-protective and self-enhancing strategies may have nega-
tive consequences such as undermining an individual’s personal
relationships and the development of skills needed to overcome
future adversities.

As I read this research on how individuals with high self-esteem

react to evaluative information, I could not help but think that it
contradicted my own intuitive sense of what it means to have high
self-esteem. If one is truly happy with oneself, being outperformed
by others, receiving an unﬂattering evaluation, or performing poorly
should not require excessive self-protection; instead, high self-esteem
individuals should roll with the punches so that potentially threat-
ening events would not ‘‘stick,’’ but, instead, roll off like ‘‘water off a
duck’s back.’’ As I read more, I found that my intuitive character-
ization of high self-esteem was also the view of high self-esteem held
by clinical psychologists with humanistic leanings (e.g., Rogers, 1959),
as well as by some major self-esteem theorists (e.g., Rosenberg,
1986). Note that I am not saying that possessing high self-esteem
means that people are impervious to adverse events. What I am

Stability of Self-Esteem

saying is that while they may feel frustrated, disappointed, or sad,
people with high self-esteem should not generally revise their feelings
of self-worth in the face of adverse occurrences.

It occurred to me that one way out of this potential contradiction

between research and theory was to presume that multiple forms of
high self-esteem exist that differ in the extent to which they are secure
or fragile. The research ﬁndings of social-personality psychologists
seemed to be tapping aspects of fragile high self-esteem, whereas
humanistically oriented theorists seemed to be capturing aspects of
secure

high self-esteem. If this were true, it would raise the question

of how to measure these different forms of high self-esteem. Around
that time, I read a paper by Savin-Williams and Demo (1983)
that suggested to me one way of doing so. Savin-Williams and
Demo used the experience sampling method to obtain multiple
assessments of adolescents’ contextually based self-esteem. Speciﬁ-
cally, participants in this research completed a self-esteem measure
when prompted by a paging device (‘‘beeper’’) at random time
intervals throughout the day as they were going about their every-
day activities. Findings indicated significant individual variation
in how much participants’ contextually based self-esteem ﬂuctuat-
ed; specifically, whereas the self-esteem of some adolescents
ﬂuctuated little or not at all, the self-esteem of other adolescents
ﬂuctuated substantially.

As it happened, I had also read a chapter by Rosenberg (1986) in

which he distinguished between barometric and baseline instability.
Baseline instability refers to long-term ﬂuctuations in one’s self-
esteem that occur gradually over an extended time period. For
example, decreases in self-esteem level are common as children tran-
sition from the relatively safe environs of elementary school to the
more turbulent middle school environment, often followed by slow
but steady increases in self-esteem through the high school years
(e.g., Bachman, O’Malley, & Johnston, 1978; Demo & Savin-Will-
iams, 1983; McCarthy & Hoge, 1982; O’Malley & Bachman, 1983;
Savin-Williams & Demo, 1984). In contrast, barometric instability
reﬂects short-term ﬂuctuations in one’s contextually based global
self-esteem. Through many discussions with one of my graduate stu-
dents at the time, Bruce Grannemann, we began to develop a con-
ceptualization of the meaning and nature of unstable (barometric)
self-esteem (Kernis, Grannemann, & Barclay, 1989; see also Kernis,
2003a; Kernis & Goldman, 2002; Kernis & Paradise, 2002; Kernis &

Kernis

Waschull, 1995). I turn now to a brief discussion of this conceptu-
alization.

Unstable self-esteem may take numerous forms. Some people may

experience dramatic shifts from feeling very positively to very neg-
atively about themselves. Others, however, may primarily ﬂuctuate
in the extent to which they feel positively or negatively about them-
selves. The precise nature of these ﬂuctuations is likely to depend
upon a number of factors, including the salience of specific self-as-
pects and the valence of recently experienced self-relevant events
(cf. Markus & Kunda, 1986). The implications of various patterns of
ﬂuctuations have yet to be examined, but I believe that, in general,
they all will reﬂect an underlying fragility in feelings of self-worth.
Elsewhere (Kernis, Cornell, Sun, Berry, & Harlow, 1993), I have
argued that the essence of unstable self-esteem is the propensity to
experience short-term ﬂuctuations in contextually based feelings of
self-worth that interact with situationally based factors to produce
specific patterns of ﬂuctuations. Thus, these ﬂuctuations may at
times (or for certain people) be primarily unidirectional (e.g., within
either a relatively positive or negative range) or bidirectional (be-
tween positive and negative ranges) (for a relevant discussion of this
issue, see Vallacher & Novak, 2000).

Unstable self-esteem reﬂects fragile, vulnerable feelings of imme-

diate self-worth that are inﬂuenced by the vicissitudes of potentially
self-relevant events that either are externally provided (e.g., interper-
sonal rejection) or self-generated (reﬂecting on one’s dating prowess).
One core characteristic of people with fragile self-esteem is that they
are highly responsive to events that have potential relevance to their
feelings of self-worth—in fact, they may interpret events as being self-
esteem relevant even when they are not (cf. Greenier et al., 1999). For
example, a nonreturned smile to a colleague may be viewed as re-
ﬂective of one’s own shortcomings and not of the other being pre-
occupied. Individuals with unstable self-esteem may respond by
accepting or exaggerating an event’s evaluative implications (e.g.,
they may feel incompetent and demoralized following a specific fail-
ure; Kernis et al., 1998) or by attacking the validity of the threatening
information or the credibility of its source (Kernis et al., 1989). In
contrast, people with relatively stable self-esteem typically have less
extreme reactions to potentially evaluative events, precisely because
these events have little impact on their immediate feelings of self-
worth. In other words, stable self-esteem reﬂects immediate feelings

Stability of Self-Esteem

of self-worth that generally are unaffected by everyday positive and
negative events. (Although I use the terms stable and unstable self-
esteem throughout this article, this is for ease of exposition only.
Conceptually and empirically, we treat stability and level of self-es-
teem as continuous dimensions along which people vary).

Several factors have been implicated in why the immediate feel-

ings of self-worth of some individuals are highly unstable. These
factors include overreliance on the evaluations, love, and approval of
others, an impoverished self-concept, and excessive dependency
needs (Butler, Hokanson, & Flynn, 1994; Kernis, Paradise et al.,
2000; Rosenberg, 1986; Tennen & Afﬂeck, 1993). Developmentally,
harsh or controlling family environments are thought to promote
fragile, unstable feelings of self-worth (Kernis, Brown, & Brody,
2000; Rogers, 1959). In addition, people with unstable self-esteem
may be especially prone to interpret everyday events as having
relevance to their feelings of self-worth and to experience their
self-esteem as ‘‘continually on the line’’ (i.e., heightened ego involve-
ment). As previously noted, these events may be external, environ-
mentally based (e.g., being turned down for a date) or more
internally based, such as reﬂecting on one’s progress toward an im-
portant goal. Greenier et al. (1999) portrayed this heightened ego
involvement as an ‘‘evaluative set’’ comprised of several interlocking
components. First, an attentional component involves ‘‘zeroing in’’
on information or events that have potentially self-evaluative impli-
cations. Second, a bias component involves interpreting ambiguous-
ly or non-self-esteem relevant events as self-esteem relevant. Finally,
a generalization component involves linking one’s immediate global
feelings of self-worth to specific outcomes and events (e.g., a poor
math performance is taken to reﬂect low overall intelligence and
worth). Each of these components may operate outside of one’s
awareness or be consciously and deliberately invoked (for further
discussion, see Kernis & Paradise, 2002).

Although different in their specifics, each of the aforementioned

factors implies that people with unstable self-esteem do not have a
well-anchored sense of their self-worth. Also they suggest that un-
stable self-esteem reﬂects fragile and vulnerable feelings of self-worth
that are subject to the vicissitudes of externally provided and inter-
nally generated positive and negative experiences. The program of
research that I present in this article examines various implications
of these assertions.

Kernis

OUR FIRST STUDY: PREDICTING ANGER AND HOSTILITY

PRONENESS AS A FUNCTION OF STABILITY AND

LEVEL OF SELF-ESTEEM

We conducted this study during the summer of 1988, collaborating
with another graduate student, Linda Barclay (now Mathis), with
the help of an ‘‘army’’ of undergraduate research assistants. Another
graduate student at the time, Victor Bissonnette, wrote a computer
program that would ‘‘call’’ participants’ paging devices (beepers)
once at a random time within each of ﬁve 2-hour periods each day.
For the ﬁrst four time periods, we instructed participants to com-
plete a form that asked for their ‘‘current’’ affect; for the last period,
we instructed participants to complete a form that asked for their
‘‘current’’ self-esteem. Specifically, we instructed participants to
complete Rosenberg’s (1965) Self-Esteem Scale based on ‘‘how
they were feeling at the moment they were completing the form.’’
They did this for a period of 7 days. We then computed the standard
deviation of individuals’ total scores across these multiple assess-
ments; the greater the standard deviation, the more unstable indi-
viduals’ self-esteem. The previous week, participants completed
Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale in small group settings based on
‘‘how they typically, or generally, felt about themselves’’ (to measure
self-esteem level).

Participants returned to the lab the week following assessment of

stability of self-esteem to complete several standard measures of an-
ger and hostility proneness. Importantly, no main effects emerged
for self-esteem level. Instead, a number of significant self-esteem
stability

self-esteem level interactions emerged. In each instance,

predicted values generated from regression equations yielded the
same pattern. Whereas individuals with unstable high self-esteem
reported the highest tendencies toward anger/hostility proneness,
individuals with stable high self-esteem reported the lowest tenden-
cies; individuals with stable or unstable low self-esteem fell between
these two extremes. Importantly, variability in daily affect did not
predict anger and hostility proneness. These ﬁndings support the
contention that, whereas unstable high self-esteem reﬂects positive,
but fragile, feelings of self-worth, stable high self-esteem reﬂects
positive and secure feelings of self-worth.

Since then, we have conducted a number of studies to examine

the joint roles of stability and level of self-esteem in a variety of

Stability of Self-Esteem

phenomena, including depression, excuse making, intrinsic motiva-
tion, reactivity to daily events, psychological well-being, relationship
functioning, children’s perceptions of parent-child communication,
self-regulation, and self-concept clarity. Although the bulk of this
research involved college students, a few studies involved children
(Kernis, Brown et al., 2000; Waschull & Kernis, 1996). As I will de-
scribe, the ﬁndings from these studies indicate that a more complete
understanding of the nature and functioning of self-esteem requires
taking into consideration not only its level but also the extent to
which it is stable or unstable.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE UNSTABLE SELF-ESTEEM?

Kernis and Waschull (1995) argued that unstable self-esteem reﬂects
fragile and vulnerable feelings of self-worth that are affected by in-
ternally generated and externally provided evaluative information.
A core characteristic of people with unstable self-esteem is that they
react very strongly to events that they view as self-esteem relevant; in
fact, they may even see self-esteem relevance in cases where it does
not exist. As in Deci and Ryan’s (1995) conceptualization of con-
tingent self-esteem, we assert that people with unstable self-esteem
are highly ego involved in their everyday activities. As noted earlier,
Greenier et al. (1999) portrayed this heightened ego involvement as
an ‘‘evaluative set’’ comprised of several interlocking components.
First, an attentional component involves excessively focusing on in-
formation or events that have potentially self-evaluative implica-
tions. Second, a bias component involves interpreting ambiguously
or non-self-esteem-relevant events as self-esteem relevant. Finally, a
generalization

component involves linking one’s immediate global

feelings of self-worth to specific outcomes and events (e.g., a bad
‘‘ﬁrst date’’ is taken to reﬂect one’s poor social skills). I now turn to
some recent studies that are relevant to this evaluative set.

Heightened Reactivity to Daily Events

If unstable self-esteem reﬂects heightened investment of self-esteem
in daily activities, the self-feelings of people with unstable as com-
pared to stable self-esteem should be more affected by everyday
positive and negative daily events. To test this hypothesis, Greenier
et al. (1999) had college students complete measures of self-esteem

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level and self-esteem stability (once or twice daily, Monday evening
through Friday morning). Participants then provided daily descrip-
tions of their most positive and negative experience Monday through
Thursday for two weeks. For each event, participants indicated the
extent to which it made them feel better or worse about themselves.
Our ﬁndings indicated that the more unstable individuals’ self-es-
teem, the worse they reported feeling in response to negative events
and the better they reported feelings in response to positive events.
Importantly, these effects emerged after controlling for self-esteem
level, which related to heightened reactivity only to negative events.

Greenier et al. (1999) also had independent coders rate each event

on a number of dimensions, including its relevance to self-esteem.
Interestingly, these coders rated the negative (but not the positive)
events reported by individuals with unstable self-esteem individuals
as more self-esteem relevant than the events reported by individuals
with stable self-esteem. Moreover, when we controlled for self-es-
teem relevance, the relationship between unstable self-esteem and
heightened reactivity disappeared for negative events. However, con-
trolling for self-esteem relevance did not substantially alter the re-
lation between unstable self-esteem and heightened reactivity to
positive events.

Greenier et al. (1999) suggested that one implication of these rat-

ings is that individuals with unstable self-esteem encounter more
frequent negative self-esteem-relevant events than do individuals
with stable self-esteem. Alternatively, these authors suggested that
the ratings might reﬂect a heightened tendency of individuals with
unstable self-esteem to attend to negative events that are self-esteem
relevant or to bias their event descriptions to emphasize aspects po-
tentially implicating self-esteem concerns. Stated differently, the rat-
ings made by these coders may either reﬂect ‘‘objective’’ differences
in the actual events reported or ‘‘subjective’’ differences associated
with the way that participants attended to and described particular
events (i.e., components of the evaluative set described earlier). Un-
fortunately, given that participants only recorded one event each
day, these data do not address the frequency with which different
individuals experience self-esteem-threatening events. However, data
that I will present later do indicate that, compared to people with
stable self-esteem, people with unstable self-esteem are more respon-
sive to the self-esteem-threatening aspects of aversive interpersonal
events (Waschull & Kernis, 1996). Therefore, while the frequency,

Stability of Self-Esteem

type, and magnitude of evaluative events that people experience in
their everyday lives may affect their degree of unstable self-esteem,
this does not fully explain why people possess unstable self-esteem.
Instead, we also must consider the inner psychological worlds of
people with unstable self-esteem to account for the heightened reac-
tivity and defensiveness they exhibit in response to evaluative events.
This heightened reactivity often has adverse consequences, as dem-
onstrated by a study on fragile self-esteem and depressive symptoms
conducted by Kernis et al. (1998).

DAILY HASSLES AND STABILITY OF SELF-ESTEEM AS

PREDICTORS OF DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS

Clinical theory and observation suggest that people who are vulner-
able to depression are susceptible to substantial downward ﬂuctua-
tions in their feelings of self-worth, particularly in response to
negative events (e.g., Chodoff, 1973; Jacobson, 1975; for a review,
see Tennen & Afﬂeck, 1993). Consistent with this contention, several
studies have shown that aversive events exacerbate depressive symp-
toms, especially among people with unstable self-esteem. Roberts
and Monroe (1992) reported that among initially nondepressed in-
dividuals, failure on a college examination predicted increases in de-
pression only among individuals with unstable self-esteem. Butler,
Hokanson, & Flynn (1994) found that, as major life stressors in-
creased, unstable self-esteem predicted greater depression among
low-, but not among high-, self-esteem individuals. Roberts and
Gotlib (1997) reported that day-to-day variability in either global
self-esteem or specific self-evaluations, in combination with stressful
life events, predicted increases in depressive symptoms over a 6-week
period, particularly in individuals who had a history of depressive
episodes. These ﬁndings emerged after controlling for other variables
such as Neuroticism and self-concept certainty. Importantly, neither
variability in day-to-day affect nor any of the other predictor var-
iables interacted with life stressors to predict depression. Finally,
none of the predictor variables (including self-esteem stability) in-
teracted with life stressors to predict increases in anxiety.

Kernis et al. (1998) examined the extent to which stability of self-

esteem, level of self-esteem, and daily hassles (e.g., not having
enough time to do things, money shortages, interpersonal conﬂicts,

Kernis

etc.) predicted increases in depressive symptoms among college stu-
dents across a 4-week period. Participants ﬁrst completed Rosenb-
erg’s (1965) Self-Esteem Scale (to measure self-esteem level) and two
measures of depressive symptoms (the Beck Depression Inventory
and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale). The
following week they completed multiple measures of current self-es-
teem to assess stability of self-esteem. Three weeks later, participants
returned to the lab to complete a measure of daily hassles (Kanner,
Coyne, Schaefer, & Lazarus, 1981), calibrated for the intervening
time period, and the same measures of depressive symptoms. Re-
gression analyses indicated that self-esteem level did not predict in-
creases in depressive symptoms, either as a main effect or when
interacting with daily hassles experienced. With respect to self-es-
teem stability, increases in depressive symptoms were most evident
among individuals who reported experiencing considerable daily
hassles and whose self-esteem was unstable (as reﬂected in significant
self-esteem stability

hassles interactions).

Additional ﬁndings from this study pertained to the links between

unstable self-esteem and overgeneralization following failure (Carver
& Ganellen, 1983) and depressive attributional styles. First, unstable
self-esteem significantly correlated with tendencies to overgeneralize
the negative implications of failure. That is, whereas people with
unstable self-esteem react to a specific failure by feeling incompetent
and stupid (the generalization component of the evaluative set de-
scribed earlier), people with stable self-esteem have more localized
reactions (i.e., if they question anything, it may be their ability to
succeed at the task at hand). Second, compared to participants with
stable self-esteem, participants with unstable self-esteem reported
greater tendencies to explain negative events in terms of factors that
were internal, stable, and global.

Interestingly, additional analyses indicated that overgeneraliza-

tion tendencies and depressive attributional styles each interacted
with daily hassles in predicting increases in depressive symptoms.
That is, in separate analyses, increases in depressive symptoms were
highest among individuals who experienced considerable daily has-
sles and who were high overrgeneralizers or who reported depressive
attributional styles. When we entered self-esteem stability and either
overgeneralization or attributional styles along with daily hassles
in regression models predicting change in depressive symptoms,
the overgeneralization

hassles (or attributional styles hassles)

Stability of Self-Esteem

interaction became nonsignificant, but the self-esteem stability

hassles interaction remained significant (on the Center for Epidemi-
ological Studies Depression Scale). Kernis et al. (1998) speculated
that depressive attributional styles or negative overgeneralization
tendencies exacerbate the adverse implications of daily hassles for
depressive symptoms to the extent that they contribute to experi-
encing short-term shifts in feelings of self-worth (for a similar view,
see Kuiper’s self-worth contingency model of depression; Kuiper &
Olinger, 1986). In other words, experiencing downward self-esteem
ﬂuctuations in response to negative events may account for why
overgeneralization tendencies and depressive attributional styles are
associated with heightened depressive symptoms in the face of
aversive daily events (for a more extensive discussion, see Kernis
et al., 1998).

Although there are some differences in ﬁndings across studies that

have examined the role of unstable self-esteem in depressive symp-
toms, they support the general conclusion that unstable self-esteem,
in combination with aversive events, precipitates or promotes de-
pressive symptoms. However, as alluded to in the previous para-
graph, researchers have not deﬁnitively established the precise
mechanism by which this occurs. Some research (Roberts & Mon-
roe, 1992) demonstrates that threats to self-esteem interact with un-
stable self-esteem to promote depressive symptoms. These studies
suggest that the particular vulnerability exhibited by individuals with
unstable self-esteem pertains to the way they react to self-esteem
threats, perhaps involving internalization, attributional, or overgen-
eralization processes. However, other studies (e.g., Kernis et al.,
1998; Roberts & Gotlib, 1997) show that daily hassles, which may or
may not have direct self-relevant implications, interact with unstable
self-esteem to exacerbate depressive symptoms. At least two expla-
nations of these latter ﬁndings exist. First, people with unstable self-
esteem may interpret non-self-relevant events as relevant to their
self-esteem, as suggested by the ‘‘evaluative set’’ described earlier.
Second, unstable self-esteem may relate more generally to a variety
of suboptimal coping strategies or personal characteristics that are
associated with susceptibility to depression or poor psychological
adjustment. Kernis and Paradise et al. (2000) obtained ﬁndings sup-
porting the latter supposition in a study that focused on self-concept
clarity (Campbell, 1990) and self-regulatory styles (Ryan & Connell,
1989), to which I now turn.

Kernis

MASTER OF ONE’S ‘‘PSYCHOLOGICAL’’ DOMAIN? STABILITY

OF SELF-ESTEEM, SELF-CONCEPT CLARITY, AND

SELF-REGULATORY STYLES

Kernis, Paradise, et al. (2000) theorized that stability of self-esteem is
one aspect of the self-system that reﬂects whether a person has a
strong (vs. weak) sense of self. Whereas someone who has a strong
sense of self is conﬁdent about his self-knowledge, makes active
choices that reﬂect her likes and dislikes, and has secure feelings of
self-worth, someone who has a weak sense of self is plagued by self-
doubt and confusion and acts to comply with internally and exter-
nally based pressures and controls. Technically speaking, we hy-
pothesized that stable (and high) self-esteem would be associated
with self-regulatory styles (Ryan & Connell, 1989) that reﬂect agency
and self-determination and with self-concepts that are clearly and
conﬁdently deﬁned (Campbell et al., 1996).

As described by Ryan and Connell, self-regulatory styles

refer to individual differences in the extent to which people engage
in goal-directed activities for reasons that reﬂect varying degrees of
choicefulness, self-determination, and integration with one’s core
self. At one extreme, external regulation reﬂects the absence
of self-determination wherein the impetus for action is external to
the actor (e.g., another person’s request tied implicitly or explicitly
to reward or punishment). Introjected regulation involves mini-
mal self-determination and is ‘‘an internally controlling state in
which affective and self-esteem contingencies are applied to enforce
or motivate an adopted value or set of actions’’ (Ryan, Rigby, &
King, 1993, p. 587). Gaining the approval of self and others pro-
motes behaviors that ‘‘are performed because one ‘should’
do them, or because not doing so might engender anxiety, guilt, or
loss of self-esteem’’ (1993, p. 587). Introjected regulation goes hand-
in-hand with heightened ego involvement. Identiﬁed regulation in-
volves considerably more self-determination, as the individual
personally and freely identiﬁes with the activity’s importance for
his or her functioning and growth. At the other extreme, intrinsic
regulation reﬂects maximal self-determination as an individual
chooses to engage in actions purely for the pleasure and enjoyment
they provide.

Self-determination theory (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 1991) holds that the

self-regulatory styles of optimally functioning individuals consist

Stability of Self-Esteem

primarily of identiﬁed and intrinsic regulation, rather than
introjected and external regulation. Consistent with this assertion,
Sheldon and Kasser (1995) found that the more self-determined
individuals’ self-regulatory styles, the higher their life satisfaction,
vitality, daily positive affect, and self-esteem level. Given that indi-
viduals with unstable self-esteem are especially likely to link their
immediate feelings of self-worth to specific outcomes and experienc-
es (heightened ego involvement), we anticipated that the more
unstable (or lower) individuals’ self-esteem, the more they would
engage in external and introjected regulation and the less they would
engage in identiﬁed and intrinsic regulation.

Possessing a well-developed self-concept also is implicated

in optimal psychological functioning (Campbell, 1990; Campbell et
al., 1996). When self-knowledge is confused and conﬂicted, it will fail
to provide meaningful input into people’s behaviors and reactions
and instead promote heightened responsiveness to immediately sa-
lient situational cues and outcomes (Brockner, 1983). When these
cues and outcomes are negative, this heightened responsiveness can
be particularly detrimental. Campbell and her colleagues (1990,
1996) introduced the construct of self-concept clarity, which they
deﬁne as ‘‘the extent to which the contents of an individual’s
self-concept (e.g., perceived personal attributes) are clearly and con-
ﬁdently deﬁned, internally consistent, and temporally stable’’
(Campbell et al., 1996, p. 141). Importantly, ﬁndings indicate that
high self-concept clarity relates to a variety of indices of psycho-
logical health and well-being, including high self-esteem and low
neuroticism (Campbell et al., 1996). Having a poorly developed self-
concept may lead individuals to rely on and be more affected by
specific evaluative information, thereby enhancing unstable self-
esteem (Kernis & Waschull, 1995). Consequently, we anticipated
that the more unstable (or lower) individuals’ self-esteem, the lower
their self-concept clarity.

To test these hypotheses, Kernis, Paradise, et al. (2000) had par-

ticipants complete measures of stability and level of self-esteem
along with measures of self-regulatory styles and self-concept clar-
ity (Campbell et al., 1996). Specifically, participants completed the
Self-Concept Clarity Scale (Campbell et al., 1996) that contains 12
items (e.g., ‘‘My beliefs about myself often conﬂict with one anoth-
er’’; ‘‘In general, I have a clear sense of who I am and what I am.’’).
In addition, participants generated a list of eight personal strivings

Kernis

(recurrent goals), and they indicated the extent to which they
engaged in each striving because of reasons reﬂecting external, in-
trojected, identiﬁed, and intrinsic self-regulatory processes. Approx-
imately 4 weeks later, participants returned to the lab and indicated
the intensity with which they experienced various emotions while
engaged in each striving during the intervening time period. Al-
though the retrospective nature of these emotion accounts limits
their deﬁnitiveness, we included them because of their potential
to provide interesting information that can be pursued in future
research.

We conducted simultaneous regression analyses separately

for each self-regulatory style by entering level and stability of self-
esteem in the same step. Our ﬁndings indicated that, compared to
individuals

with

unstable

(or

low)

self-esteem,

individuals

with stable (or high) self-esteem regulated their goal strivings more
in terms of external and introjected regulations and less in terms of
identiﬁed and intrinsic (marginally, for self-esteem stability)
regulations. Analyses of the retrospective emotion accounts
indicated that, compared to individuals with stable self-esteem, in-
dividuals with unstable self-esteem felt more tense and pressured
when

pursuing

their

strivings.

This

last

ﬁnding

provides

indirect support for our contention that individuals with unstable
self-esteem are chronically ego involved as they go about their
everyday activities. Finally, regression analyses indicated that,
compared to individuals with unstable (or low) self-esteem,
individuals with stable (or high) self-esteem were higher in self-
concept clarity.

Kernis, Paradise, et al. (2000) suggested that self-esteem stability

and level, self-regulatory styles and self-concept clarity are compo-
nents of an interlocking system that are likely to have reciprocal
inﬂuences upon one another. Our theoretical interests led us to enter
the system at the self-esteem variables to determine their associations
with other variables in the system. In most cases, the two self-esteem
variables had additive effects. Thus, individuals with stable high self-
esteem were the most self-determining in their self-regulatory styles,
were highest in self-concept clarity, and were most favorable in
their goal-related affect (high interest and low tension). As
Kernis, Paradise, et al. (2000) stated, ‘‘[Individuals with stable
high self-esteem] . . . are the masters of their psychological domain’’
(p. 1304).

Stability of Self-Esteem

STABILITY OF SELF-ESTEEM AND INTRINSIC MOTIVATION

IN THE CLASSROOM

Waschull and Kernis (1996) obtained ﬁndings conceptually similar
to those of Kernis, Paradise, et al. (2000) in a study that focused on
ﬁfth-grade children’s intrinsic motivation in the classroom. Research
indicates that situational factors that emphasize the link between
specific outcomes and self-esteem often undermine intrinsic motiva-
tion (Ryan, 1993). Stated differently, heightened concerns about
one’s self-esteem may undermine the desire to take on challenges and
instead promote a more cautious, but safer, route to positive out-
comes. Given that unstable self-esteem reﬂects a heightened tenden-
cy to link one’s self-esteem to specific events and outcomes, we
expected that it would relate to lower levels of intrinsic motivation in
children. We administered Harter’s Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Orienta-
tion in the Classroom Scale as well as Harter’s Perceived Compe-
tence Scale for Children (using the global self-worth subscale to
measure stability and level of self-esteem). To assess self-esteem sta-
bility, experimenters went to children’s classrooms twice daily
over the course of 1 week to administer measures of ‘‘current’’
self-esteem. Our ﬁndings indicated that, the more unstable children’s
self-esteem, the lower their Preference for Challenge (Does the child
prefer challenging tasks or those that are easy?) and Curiosity/In-
terest scores (Is the child motivated by curiosity or to get good
grades and please the teacher?). These effects emerged with self-es-
teem level controlled. Thus, it appears that unstable self-esteem in
children is linked to a learning orientation that is directed toward
self-esteem protection rather than toward enhancing learning and
growth.

Another aspect of this study focused on children’s reasons for

becoming angry with their peers. Participants read ﬁve vignettes de-
picting aversive interpersonal events, each of which constituted an
instrumental thwarting as well as a potential self-esteem threat (e.g.,
‘‘You are really thirsty after playing outside with your classmates.
Just when you are next in line to get a drink from the fountain, an-
other boy (girl) pushes ahead of you, making you wait’’). The results
(controlling for self-esteem level) indicated that the more unstable
children’s self-esteem, the more likely they were to indicate that they
would become angry because of the events’ self-esteem-threatening
aspects (‘‘because you would feel or appear weak’’).

Kernis

A ﬁnal aspect of this study involved examining whether ﬂuctua-

tions in children’s daily global feelings of self-worth related to ﬂuc-
tuations in their daily appraisals of competence and social
acceptance. To the extent that unstable self-esteem is associated
with generalizing the implications of domain-specific evaluative in-
formation to global feelings of self-worth, the magnitude of day-to-
day ﬂuctuations in perceived competence and social acceptance
should relate to the magnitude of ﬂuctuations in global feelings of
self-worth. To examine this issue, we asked participants to rate their
current felt competence and social acceptance each time they rated
their current self-esteem. As anticipated, the magnitude of daily
ﬂuctuations in perceived competence and social acceptance each
correlated with the magnitude of daily ﬂuctuations in global self-
esteem (rs 5 .59, .62, respectively).

In related research involving college students, Kernis et al. (1993,

Study 2) tested the hypothesis that variability in specific evaluations
and global self-esteem would relate more strongly if the self-evalu-
ative dimension were high rather than low in importance. In addition
to daily ratings of current self-evaluations and global self-esteem,
participants also rated how important each domain (competence,
social acceptance, physical attractiveness) was to their feelings of
self-worth. A number of interesting ﬁndings emerged. First, repli-
cating Waschull and Kernis (1996), day-to-day variability along each
dimension significantly correlated with global self-esteem variability.
Second, the relation between greater variability in perceived compe-
tence and unstable self-esteem was especially strong among people
who viewed competence as an important determinant of their overall
self-worth. Third, the same pattern emerged for physical attractive-
ness and social acceptance, but only among people who rated them-
selves relatively favorably along these dimensions. For people who
rated themselves unfavorably on these dimensions, high daily vari-
ability related to highly unstable self-esteem regardless of the di-
mension’s importance. Kernis et al. (1993) speculated that the
substantial interpersonal consequences associated with low social
acceptance and physical attractiveness may have overshadowed the
impact of personal importance.

Summary

Our program of research has revealed that stability of

self-esteem relates to a variety of aspects of psychological function-
ing. Among the ﬁndings reviewed so far, compared to individuals

Stability of Self-Esteem

with stable self-esteem, individuals with unstable self-esteem (a) have
self-feelings that are more affected by everyday negative and positive
events (Greenier et al., 1999); (b) experience greater increases in de-
pressive symptoms when faced with daily hassles (Kernis et al.,
1998); (c) report greater tendencies to overgeneralize the negative
implications of specific failures and to attribute negative outcomes to
internal, stable, and global factors (Kernis, Paradise, et al., 1998);
(d) have more impoverished self-concepts (Kernis, Paradise, et al.,
2000); (e) regulate goal-directed behaviors suboptimally (Kernis,
Paradise, et al., 2000) and (f) adopt a cautious, self-esteem-protective
orientation toward learning as opposed to curiosity and challenge
seeking (ﬁfth-grade children; Waschull & Kernis, 1996).

Very little is known about the developmental factors that are

responsible for individual differences in stability of self-esteem. In
the next section, I discuss our research that addressed this issue.

FRAGILE SELF-ESTEEM AND CHILDREN’S PERCEPTIONS OF

PARENT-CHILD COMMUNICATION

Kernis, Brown, and Brody (2000) examined how stability of self-es-
teem in children relates to their perceptions of how their parents
communicate with them. Participants in this study consisted of 11- to
12-year-old boys and girls who resided with both of their biological
parents. Seventy-nine percent of participants self-identiﬁed as Cau-
casian and the remainder as African American. Ninety-ﬁve percent
of mothers and 91 percent of fathers had graduated from high
school, and the majority had pursued further education.

Experimenters collected the data in two home visits. At the end of

the ﬁrst home visit, the interviewer provided the child and his or her
parents with instructions for completing the stability of self-esteem
measure. A packet of self-esteem measures (Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem
Scale, with added instructions to base their responses on how they
feel ‘‘right at this moment’’) were left with the child. Participants
were asked to complete one form before bedtime and one before
leaving for school in the morning for a period of 5 consecutive days.
Analyses indicated that children’s perceptions of many aspects of
parent-child communication patterns (especially fathers’) were
linked to the degree to which they possessed unstable or low self-
esteem. Children who perceived their fathers to be highly critical, to

Kernis

engage in insulting name calling, and to use guilt arousal and love
withdrawal as control techniques had more unstable (as well as low-
er) self-esteem than did children who did not perceive their fathers in
this manner. In addition, compared to children with stable self-es-
teem, children with unstable self-esteem indicated that their fathers
less frequently talked about the good things that they (the children)
had done and were less likely to use value-afﬁrming methods when
they did show their approval. Still other ﬁndings indicated that,
compared to fathers of children with low self-esteem, fathers of chil-
dren with stable but not unstable high self-esteem were perceived as
using better problem-solving methods to solve disagreements with
their children. Interestingly, perceptions of mothers’ communication
styles were more consistently related to children’s self-esteem level
than to their self-esteem stability. The ﬁndings for self-esteem sta-
bility that did emerge, however, were largely consistent with those
that emerged for fathers.

Although disconcerting, it is not surprising that derogatory name

calling and criticism by parents is associated with lower and more
unstable self-esteem in children. Children generally are sensitive to
evaluative information conveyed to them by their parents and other
significant adults (Dweck & Goetz, 1978; Rosenberg, 1986). Unfor-
tunately, when this information is clearly and frequently negative, it
is very difﬁcult for children to avoid questioning their own value and
worth (Harter, 1993). Receiving substantial overt criticism as a child
may promote the overgeneralizing tendencies and detrimental
attributional styles that we have observed among college students
with unstable (or low) self-esteem. When fathers attempt to control
children’s unwanted behaviors by arousing guilt or by withdrawing
their love, they unwittingly create contingencies wherein children feel
worthy and valuable when they act appropriately, but unlovable and
unworthy when they act inappropriately. Such contingencies or con-
ditions of worth (Rogers, 1959) can foster the type of non-self-
determined self-regulatory styles that we observed in college students
(external and introjected rather than identiﬁed and intrinsic; Kernis,
Paradise, et al., 2000).

On a more positive note, the more that fathers were reputed to

show their approval of their children in value-afﬁrming ways, the
higher and more stable was their children’s self-esteem. Spending
time together and displaying physical affection signals to children
that they are valued provide opportunities to deepen affective bonds.

Stability of Self-Esteem

Instead of promoting an external or introjected self-regulatory style
in children, value-afﬁrming methods promote identiﬁed and intrinsic
self-regulation (Ryan, 1993) as they encourage children to trust and
utilize their own internal states as guides for action. In addition, fa-
thers of children with stable (but not unstable) high self-esteem were
perceived as being especially high in positive problem-solving be-
haviors (e.g., considering child’s feelings, listening to child’s view-
point) and especially low in negative problem-solving behaviors
(e.g., getting angry and criticizing the child’s ideas, insisting on get-
ting his way). These fathers’ problem-solving styles are very similar
to the authoritative parenting style described by Baumrind (1971)
that previous research has linked to high self-esteem in children (Buri
et al., 1988; Coopersmith, 1967). Kernis, Brown et al.’s (2000) ﬁnd-
ings that children with unstable high self-esteem did not differ from
children with (stable or unstable) low self-esteem in how they char-
acterized their fathers’ problem solving styles suggest that this rela-
tionship may be limited to promoting stable high self-esteem.

IMPLICATIONS OF STABILITY OF SELF-ESTEEM FOR

DISTINGUISHING FRAGILE FROM SECURE HIGH SELF-ESTEEM

A considerable amount of research on stability of self-esteem illu-
minates the distinction between fragile and secure high self-esteem.
Secure high self-esteem reﬂects positive feelings of self-worth that are
well anchored and secure and that are positively associated with a
wide range of psychological health and well-being indices. Individ-
uals with secure high self-esteem like, value, and accept themselves,
‘‘warts and all.’’ They do not frequently need to bolster their feelings
of worth through self-promoting or self-protective strategies because
their feelings of self-worth are not challenged easily. In short, indi-
viduals with secure high self-esteem typically experience everyday
positive and negative outcomes in ways that do not implicate their
global feelings of worth or value. In contrast, fragile high self-esteem
reﬂects positive feelings of self-worth that are vulnerable to threat, as
they require continual bolstering, protection, and validation through
various self-protective or self-enhancement strategies. Individuals
with fragile high self-esteem do not like to see any weaknesses in
themselves, and they work very hard to avoid doing so (for more
extensive discussion of the secure versus fragile high self-esteem

Kernis

distinction, see Kernis, 2003a; Kernis & Paradise, 2002). As I will
discuss, research demonstrates that, compared to individuals with
stable high self-esteem, individuals with unstable high self-esteem
engage in greater self-protection and self-enhancement strategies, yet
they are lower in psychological adjustment.

FRAGILE VERSUS SECURE HIGH SELF-ESTEEM AND CLOSE

RELATIONSHIP FUNCTIONING

Lydon, Jamieson, and Holmes (1997) distinguished between being in
a relationship and the time period when a relationship is desired but
not yet formed. During this so-called pre-unit phase, seemingly in-
nocuous events (e.g., not returning a phone call) are imbued with a
great deal of meaning and implications for the perceived fate of the
relationship and the desired partner’s view of oneself. Rather than
focus on relationship stage, Kernis et al. (2003) focused on the degree
to which individuals’ high self-esteem is secure versus fragile. We
reasoned that individuals with secure high self-esteem would inter-
pret and react to ambiguously negative actions by their partner by
treating them as innocuous, either by minimizing their negative as-
pects or by offering a benign interpretation of them. In contrast, we
surmised that, just as individuals in the pre-unit phase of relationship
development, individuals with fragile high self-esteem would imbue
these events with negative implications, in this instance either by
‘‘internalizing’’ their negative implications or by resolving to recip-
rocate in kind to get even with their partner.

Approximately 120 male and female undergraduates currently in

a relationship for 3 or more months read nine scenarios that depicted
ambiguously negative events in which their partner might engage.
Each event had multiple plausible causes and implications for self,
partner, and the relationship. Participants rated the likelihood that
they would respond in each of four different ways designed to cap-
ture this multiplicity of potential causes and implications. Two re-
sponse options signaled overinvestment of the self and implied that
the self somehow was threatened by the event. Of these, one (per-
sonalizing

) involved magnifying the event’s negative implications for

the self. The other (reciprocating) involved resolving to ‘‘get even’’
with one’s partner as a way to deal with the self-esteem threat. The

Stability of Self-Esteem

two remaining response options captured reactions or interpreta-
tions that did not involve overinvestment of the self. One of these
(benign) involved a transient, externally based (usually partner-re-
lated) explanation, and the other (minimize) involved taking the
event at ‘‘face value,’’ i.e., not making a big deal of it. An example
scenario with response options is as follows:

Your partner does not look up from what he or she is doing when you
ﬁrst enter the room and begin talking. You ask several questions and
still your partner answers without looking up. To what extent would
you

. . .

(a) not think very much about it (Minimize)?
(b) think that your partner is engrossed in something very interest

ing or important(Benign)?

enough (Personalize)?

(d) go about your business, but treat your partner that very same

way when he/she later approaches you (Get even)?

Regression analyses indicated that whereas unstable high self-es-

teem individuals reported being most likely to engage in personal-
izing and get-even reactions, stable high self-esteem individuals
reported being least likely (low self-esteem individuals fell between).
Conversely, whereas stable high self-esteem individuals reported be-
ing most likely to engage in benign and minimizing reactions, un-
stable high self-esteem individuals reported being least likely (again,
low self-esteem individuals fell between). These ﬁndings are impor-
tant because they point to the operation of dynamics associated with
fragile high self-esteem that until now have been ascribed to low self-
esteem individuals (Murray, Holmes, MacDonald, & Ellsworth,
1998), or to those highly sensitive to rejection (Downey, Freitas,
Michaelis, & Khouri, 1998).

To the extent that participants’ responses reﬂected their actual

responses to partner behaviors, the defensive and hostile reactions
reported by unstable high self-esteem individuals may have had cu-
mulative, adverse effects on the development of intimacy and rela-
tionship quality. To investigate this possibility, participants
completed Spanier’s (1976) Relationship Quality scale twice, once
at the session when they completed the scenario measure and again

Kernis

approximately 4–6 weeks later. Predicted values generated from sig-
nificant self-esteem stability

self-esteem level interactions indicat-

ed that whereas individuals with stable high self-esteem reported the
highest relationship quality, individuals with unstable high self-es-
teem reported the lowest (and individuals with either stable or un-
stable low self-esteem fell between these two extremes). We then
examined the potential mediating role of responses to the scenario
measure by repeating the regression analyses adding each of the re-
sponse types individually. These analyses indicated that when we
added either personalizing or get-even responses, the self-esteem
stability

self-esteem level interaction no longer was significant

(while the responses continued to exert significant main effects).

Earlier evidence regarding the heightened defensiveness associated

with unstable high self-esteem came from Kernis et al.’s (1989) ex-
amination of anger and hostility proneness. Defensiveness often
manifests itself in outbursts of anger and hostility that are aimed at
restoring damaged self-feelings (Felson, 1984; Feshbach, 1970).
Kernis et al. (1989) reported that unstable high self-esteem individ-
uals scored the highest on several well-validated anger and hostility
inventories (e.g., the Novaco Anger Inventory; Novaco, 1975), stable
high self-esteem individuals scored the lowest, and stable and un-
stable low self-esteem individuals scored between these two extremes.
As evidence of self-aggrandizing tendencies, compared with stable
high self-esteem individuals, people with unstable high self-esteem
reported being more likely to boast about a success to their friends
(Kernis, Greenier, Herlocker, Whisenhunt, & Abend, 1997); after an
actual success, they were more likely to claim that they did so in spite
of the operation of performance-inhibiting factors (Kernis, Granne-
mann, & Barclay, 1992).

Importantly, the enhanced tendencies toward self-enhancement

and self-protection exhibited by unstable high self-esteem individuals
do not translate into greater psychological adjustment and well-be-
ing. Indeed, this is what we (Paradise & Kernis, 2002) expected given
our characterization of unstable high self-esteem as reﬂecting fragile
high self-esteem. College student participants completed Ryff’s
(1989) psychological well-being measure as well as measures of lev-
el and stability of self-esteem. Ryff’s measure assesses six core
components of psychological well-being, as follows: (1) self-accept-
ance

(‘‘I like most aspects of my personality’’); (2) positive relations

with others

(‘‘I have not experienced many warm and trusting

Stability of Self-Esteem

relationships with others’’ [reversed]); (3) autonomy (‘‘I judge myself
by what I think is important, not by the values of what others think
is important’’); (4) environmental mastery (‘‘I am quite good at man-
aging the many responsibilities of my daily life’’); (5) purpose in life
(‘‘Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of
them’’); and (6) personal growth (‘‘I think it is important to have
new experiences that challenge how you think about yourself and
the world’’).

Our ﬁndings indicated that individuals with high self-esteem re-

ported higher scores on each of the subscales than did individuals
with low self-esteem. In addition, on all subscales except personal
growth, individuals with unstable high self-esteem reported lower
scores than did individuals with stable high self-esteem. This differ-
ence was reﬂected in either self-esteem stability

self-esteem level

interactions or in two main effects. Thus, whereas individuals with
stable high self-esteem reported that they functioned autonomously,
possessed a clear sense of meaning in their lives, related effectively
within both their physical and social environments, and were highly
self-accepting, the same was less true of individuals with unstable
high self-esteem.

New Directions

Recently, we have examined how stability of self-esteem relates to au-
thenticity, variability in daily need satisfaction, and attachment styles.

Authenticity

A multicomponent conceptualization

. Goldman and

Kernis (2002; Kernis & Goldman, 2004, 2005; Kernis, 2003a) recently
introduced a conceptualization of authenticity, which we deﬁne as
the unobstructed operation of one’s true or core self in one’s daily
enterprise. In our view, authenticity that has four interrelated, but
distinct, components: awareness, unbiased processing, behavior, and
relational orientation

. Brian Goldman and I developed the Authen-

ticity Inventory (AI) to assess each of these four components: aware-
ness

(‘‘For better or for worse, I am aware of who I truly am’’);

unbiased processing

(‘‘I ﬁnd it easy to pretend I don’t have faults’’)

(reversed); behavior (‘‘I ﬁnd it easy to pretend to be something other
than my true self’’) (reversed); and relational orientation (‘‘My open-
ness and honesty in relationships are essential for their develop-
ment’’). Conﬁrmatory factor analyses indicate that items in our

Kernis

latest version (AI, Version 3) do tap four discriminable components
of authenticity that comprise a general authenticity construct (Gold-
man, Kernis, & Lance, 2004).

Goldman and Kernis (2002) administered the AI and measures of

life satisfaction, affect, self-esteem level, and contingent self-esteem to
approximately 70 individuals. The ﬁndings indicated that total au-
thenticity scores positively related to life satisfaction and high self-
esteem and negatively related to contingent self-esteem and negative
affect. In other research (described in Kernis & Goldman, 2004, 2005),
we have found robust relationships between authenticity and its com-
ponents and various aspects of psychological health and well-being,
including Ryff’s (1989) measure. As part of a larger study, Herrmann,
Kernis, and Goldman (2004) correlated stability and level of self-es-
teem with overall authenticity and each of its components. As dis-
played in Table 1, stability of self-esteem correlated negatively with
awareness, unbiased processing, behavior, and total authenticity; lev-
el of self-esteem correlated positively with awareness, behavior, rela-
tional orientation, and total authenticity. Thus, individuals with high
and stable self-esteem obtained the highest authenticity scores, sup-
porting the view that stable high self-esteem reﬂects a healthier form
of high self-esteem than does unstable high self-esteem.

Attachment styles

Mikiluncer and Shaver (in press) review a con-

siderable amount of research showing that the defensiveness and
self-aggrandizing tendencies that we have found associated with un-
stable (in particular, high) self-esteem is absent in people with secure
attachment representations. For example, in a series of four studies,

Table 1

Correlations Between Components of Authenticity and Stability

and Level of Self-esteem

Authenticity

Self-Esteem Level

Self-Esteem Stability

Awareness

.26

.29

Unbiased Processing

.08

.33

Behavior

.35

.24

Relational Orientation

.22

.01

Total Authenticity

.32

.29

o.05.

o.01.

Stability of Self-Esteem

Mikiluncer (1998) found that avoidant individuals were especially
likely to engage in defensive self-inﬂation when threatened but that
secure individuals were unaffected by these same threats. They state,
‘‘In our view, interactions with available, caring, and loving attach-
ment ﬁgures in times of need constitute the most important form of
personal protection and the primary source of an authentic, stable
sense of self-worth. Accordingly, we view the activation of repre-
sentations of attachment security as a default inner resource that
supercedes self-enhancement needs and renders self-enhancement
maneuvers less necessary’’ (Mikiluncer & Shaver, in press, p. 13).
These considerations suggest that the higher and more stable indi-
viduals’ self-esteem, the more secure and less insecure their attach-
ment representations. Foster, Kernis, and Goldman (2004) had
approximately 100 male and female undergraduate students com-
plete measures of attachment representations and stability and level
of self-esteem. The correlations are displayed in Table 2, where it can
be seen that self-esteem level correlates positively with secure repre-
sentations and negatively with preoccupied, fearful, and (marginally)
dismissive representations. Self-esteem level also correlates negative-
ly with rejection sensitivity (Downey et al., 1998). On the other hand,
self-esteem stability correlates negatively with secure representations
and positively with preoccupied and fearful representations, and re-
jection sensitivity. These data are consistent with Mikiluncer and
Shaver’s contentions, given that stable high self-esteem related to the
most secure and least insecure attachment representations. Moreo-
ver, the fact that unstable self-esteem was associated with more pre-
occupied and less secure attachments is consistent with sociometer

Table 2

Correlations Between Attachment Styles, Rejection Sensitivity,

Stability of Self-Esteem, and Level of Self-Esteem

Attachment

Self-Esteem Level

Self-Esteem Stability

Secure

.47

.35

Preoccupied

.21

.28

Fearful

.29

.23

Dismissive

.19

.04

Rejection Sensitivity

.40

.22

o.07.

o.05.

o.01.

Kernis

theory (Leary & Baumeister, 2000), which holds that people’s state
self-esteem is responsive to feelings of acceptance and rejection. Ac-
cording to sociometer theory, the roller-coaster-like relationships—
extreme highs (acceptance) and extreme lows (rejection)—of those
with preoccupied attachments may promote unstable self-esteem,
whereas the relatively harmonious relationships associated with
secure attachment may promote stable self-esteem.

Stability of self-esteem and variability in daily need satisfaction

Foster,

Kernis, Heppner, Lakey, and Goldman (2004) recently completed a
study that focused on the relationship between satisfaction of var-
ious psychological needs and individual differences in stability of
self-esteem. Theory and research link some psychological needs to
self-esteem (competence, autonomy, relatedness, authenticity, self-
actualization) but not others (money, security, physical well-being,
pleasure, inﬂuencing others). Accordingly, we expected variability in
satisfaction of the former, but not the latter, set of needs to relate to
stability of self-esteem. We assessed stability of self-esteem in the
usual manner. The next two weeks, Sunday through Thursday, par-
ticipants rated the extent to which they fulﬁlled each of eleven psy-
chological needs (those just mentioned, plus self-esteem). Two sets of
preliminary ﬁndings corroborated our expectations. First, factor
analysis revealed two factors, the ﬁrst of which represented varia-
bility in the self-esteem-relevant needs (all loadings .70 or greater)
and the second of which represented variability in the non-self-
esteem-relevant needs (all loadings .61 or higher). Physical pleasure
was the only need that loaded on both factors (.51 on the ﬁrst factor,
.55 on the second factor). Thus, variability in daily self-esteem co-
incided with variability in the self-esteem-relevant needs. Second,
when we regressed stability of self-esteem on to composite self-
esteem-relevant and non-self-esteem-relevant variability indexes,
only the composite self-esteem-relevant index was significant. These
initial ﬁndings link daily fulﬁllment of certain psychological needs to
variability in people’s day-to-day feelings of self-worth.

CONCLUSION

In this article, I reviewed the major ﬁndings from our research
program that has focused on the joint roles of self-esteem level and

Stability of Self-Esteem

self-esteem stability in various aspects of psychological functioning
and well-being. In numerous studies, important ﬁndings would have
gone undetected had we not measured people’s contextually based
current feelings of self-worth. The ﬁndings that emerged indicate
that a full understanding of self-esteem processes will require taking
into consideration multiple components of self-esteem. These com-
ponents include stability of self-esteem, implicit self-esteem, and the
extent to which self-esteem is contingent (for discussion of these
other components, see Kernis, 2003a, 2003b).

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Stability of Self-Esteem

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