title: The long-term stability of self-esteem: its time-dependent decay and nonzero asymptote.
abstract: How stable are individual differences in self-esteem? We examined the time-dependent decay of rank-order stability of self-esteem and tested whether stability asymptotically approaches zero or a nonzero value across long test-retest intervals. Analyses were based on 6 assessments across a 29-year period of a sample of 3,180 individuals aged 14 to 102 years. The results indicated that, as test-retest intervals increased, stability exponentially decayed and asymptotically approached a nonzero value (estimated as .43). The exponential decay function explained a large proportion of variance in observed stability coefficients, provided a better fit than alternative functions, and held across gender and for all age groups from adolescence to old age. Moreover, structural equation modeling of the individual-level data suggested that a perfectly stable trait component underlies stability of self-esteem. The findings suggest that the stability of self-esteem is relatively large, even across very long periods, and that self-esteem is a trait-like characteristic.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland. farah.kuster@unibas.ch
authors.forename: Farah
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Kuster
authors.forename: Ulrich
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Orth
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012649:Self Concept; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult