Abstract
Research on self-esteem has had a long, prolific history in psychology. Although several reasons could be cited for the topic’s popularity, the most important, in our view, is that self-esteem has been shown to have a pervasive and powerful impact on human cognition, motivation, emotion, and behavior. Research has demonstrated, for example, self- esteem effects in such diverse areas as competition, conformity, attraction, causal attribution, achievement, helping, and coping with stressful life events (DeLongis, Folkman, & Lazarus, 1988; Wells & Marwell, 1976; Wylie, 1974, 1979). Despite decades of empirical and theoretical activity, however, little consensus has been achieved with regard to the locus of these effects. In particular, as reflected in the title of this volume, there is still considerable debate surrounding the specific characteristics of people low in trait self-esteem that somehow cause them to respond in ways that are often detrimental to their psychological well-being (Taylor & Brown, 1988).
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Campbell, J.D., Lavallee, L.F. (1993). Who am I? The Role of Self-Concept Confusion in Understanding the Behavior of People with Low Self-Esteem. In: Baumeister, R.F. (eds) Self-Esteem. The Plenum Series in Social / Clinical Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-8956-9_1
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