title: Global self-esteem in relation to structural models of personality and affectivity.
abstract: Three studies examined global self-esteem in relation to structural models of personality and affectivity. In every study, self-esteem was strongly negatively correlated with Neuroticism/Negative Affectivity and moderately to strongly related to Extraversion/Positive Affectivity. Additional findings, however, revealed that self-esteem is better viewed at the lower order level. For instance, global self-esteem correlated -.79 with the Depression facet of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (P. T. Costa, Jr., & R. R. McCrae, 1992) in Study 3. Moreover, confirmatory factor analyses produced very strong correlations between self-esteem and depression in both Study 2 (r = -.82) and Study 3 (r = -.86). Taken together, the data suggest that global self-esteem measures define one end of a bipolar continuum, with trait indicators of depression defining the other.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, Iowa City 52242-1407, USA. david-watson@uiowa.edu
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Watson
authors.forename: Jerry
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Suls
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Haig
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010551:Personality; D010555:Personality Inventory; D012649:Self Concept