Self-Concepts and Self-Esteem, Children and Adolescents

Susan Harter

“Am I me?” a thoughtful 2-year-old queried of his parents. Beginning in the second year of life, toddlers begin to talk about themselves. They master self-relevant personal pronouns ( I and me ) that distinguish them from others. With development, they come to understand that they possess various characteristics, some of which may be positive (“I'm smart”), and some of which may be negative (“I'm unpopular”). Of particular interest is how the very nature of such self-evaluations changes with development and differs between individual children and adolescents across two basic evaluative categories. The first category is domain-specific self-concepts , namely, how one judges one's attributes in particular arenas (e.g., scholastic competence, social acceptance, physical competence, and so forth). A given individual may vary tremendously in how he or she feels across these domains, creating a meaningful profile of scores. One typically does not feel equally adequate across all domains. The ...

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