Personality and self-esteem development across the lifespan

ABSTRACT—After decades of debate, a consensus is emerg-ing about the way self-esteem develops across the lifespan. On average, self-esteem is relatively high in childhood, dropsduringadolescence(particularlyforgirls),risesgrad-ually throughout adulthood, and then declines sharply in old age. Despite these general age differences, individuals tend to maintain their ordering relative to one another: Individuals who have relatively high self-esteem at one point in time tend to have relatively high self-esteem years later. This type of stability (i.e., rank-order stability) is somewhat lower during childhood and old age than during adulthood, but the overall level of stability is comparable to that found for other personality characteristics. Directions for further research include (a) replication of the basic trajectory using more sophisticated longitudinal designs