by Jarred James Breaux

Created on: August 16, 2009

Self-esteem and self-concept also play an integral role in developing a self-understanding. Self-esteem is how worthy a person views themselves. Self-esteem is a general idea that represents collective, overall assessments, both positive and negative, of the self. How a person perceives themselves and how others perceive that person is very important in the evaluation of self-esteem. The evaluation of others and the evaluation of self are related and together determine a person's self-worth. Self-concept is domain-specific. In other words, self-concept is concerned with a single aspect of an individual, such as athletic, academic, physical appearance, social ranking, conduct, friendships, romantic appear, and competence. Where one may excel in one area, he or she may be lacking in another. These individual self-concepts total up to the overall idea of self-esteem.

In a study on self esteem and parent-child relations, it was found that boys with higher self esteem expressed affection, were concerned about normal male problems, had a good home environment, participated in family activities, gave help when boys needed it, set clear and fair rules, followed these rules, and allowed freedoms with well-defined limitations.

Parents and peers are a vital part to the adolescent's self-esteem. Parents and peers influence individuals in different ways, which leads to different levels of self-esteem. Different domains are affected at different rates and by different people. For instance, parents may push an individual to succeed academically or athletically; however, peers may pressure an individual to change their physical appearance. The generalized self-worth that emerges is profoundly shaped by how others view yourself.

While self-esteem varies throughout a person's lifetime and low self-esteem is usually temporary, long-term low self-esteem is a very dangerous thing. There are detrimental consequences to long-term low self-esteem, such as depression, suicide, eating disorders, and delinquency. While the nature of an adolescent is important to their evaluation of self-worth, external forces greatly influence an individual to do something drastic. Low self-esteem combined with external, often situational factors, are probably involve in murders and eating disorders. Negative variants in personality and individual self-concepts coupled with external situations, such like embarrassment or rejection, seem to influence violent thoughts among adolescents. Also, cultural

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>