Abstract
The variability of self-esteem is an important characteristic of self-esteem. However, little is known about the mechanisms that underlie it. The goal of the current study was to empirically explore these underlying mechanisms. It is commonly assumed that state self-esteem (the fleeting experience of the self) is a response to the immediate social context. Drawing from a complex dynamic systems perspective, the self-organizing self-esteem model asserts that this responsivity is not passive or stimulus-response like, but that the impact of the social context on state self-esteem is intimately connected to the intrinsic dynamics of self-esteem. The model suggests that intrinsic dynamics are the result of higher-order self-esteem attractors that can constrain state self-esteem variability. The current study tests this model, and more specifically, the prediction that state self-esteem variability is less influenced by changes in the immediate context if relatively strong, as opposed to weak, self-esteem attractors underlie intrinsic dynamics of self-esteem. To test this, parent-adolescent dyads (N=13, Mage=13.6) were filmed during seminaturalistic discussions. Observable components of adolescent state self-esteem were coded in real time, as well as real-time parental autonomy-support and relatedness. Kohonen’s self-organizing maps were used to derive attractor-like patterns: repeated higher-order patterns of adolescents’ self-esteem components. State space grids were used to assess how much adolescents’ self-esteem attractors constrained their state self-esteem variability. We found varying levels of attractor strength in our sample. In accordance with our prediction, we found that state self-esteem was less sensitive to changes in parental support and relatedness for adolescents with stronger self-esteem attractors. Discussion revolves around the implications of our findings for the ontology of self-esteem.
Highlights
Individuals differ in their level of self-esteem and in the extent to which their self-esteem is variable over time
The aim of the current article is to demonstrate that state self-esteem variability emerges from the interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic forces. We suggest that this can best be understood from the perspective that self-esteem functions as a complex dynamic system, where state self-esteem variability is a microlevel process that emerges from a dynamic interplay between perturbations from the immediate context and higher-order selfesteem attractors
This is a theoretical model of self-esteem as a complex dynamic systems, and it explains the precise nature of “intrinsic dynamics” in self-esteem, and how the interaction between intrinsic dynamics and contextual forces can bring about state self-esteem variability [19]. In empirically testing these predictions, we explore how pivotal properties of a complex dynamic system may be empirically studied in the field of self-esteem, including nested timescales of development, circular causality, bottom-up emergence of attractor-like patterns, and top-down constraint on lower-order variability
Summary
Individuals differ in their level of self-esteem and in the extent to which their self-esteem is variable over time. While the pervasive importance of state self-esteem variability is clear, it is as yet unclear from where state self-esteem variability, and individual differences therein, stems. There are broadly speaking two streams of research concerning state self-esteem, both pointing toward different explanations for state self-esteem variability. As we will describe below, there appears to be a theoretical and methodological chasm between these two streams of research. While each of them has contributed important understanding of self-esteem as a process, each neglects the other
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