Self-Esteem: A Literature Review

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Over the years, several definitions of self-esteem have been proposed (Swann, Chang-Schneider, & McClarty, 2007); however, overall, there is an agreement that self-esteem refers to the process of how self is appraised in relationship to competency in different domains of life functioning (Neff & Vonk, 2009). According to Harter (2012), self-esteem is the subjective evaluation of self worth. In chapter five, Harter reviews a significant amount of research, and highlights the consistent findings that self-esteem is particularly highly correlated with perceived physical appearance. Comparing other domains of self-concept and their relationship to self-esteem, Harter and colleagues discovered that in comparison to perceived physical appearance, …show more content…

Neff and Vonk (2009) explain that a major difference lies in the cognitive and behavioral response to the self when experiencing failure and suffering. Neff (2003a) explains that the process of self-compassion is similar to the compassion experienced for others. Self-compassion, according to Neff (2003) is the process of meeting one’s own suffering with kindness and caring towards the self in the midst of failures and incompetency. In article reviewing the effects of self-compassion for female college students, Neff and colleagues assert “when life circumstances are stressful, instead of immediately trying to control or fix the problem, a self-compassionate response might entail pausing first to offer oneself soothing and comfort” (Smeets, Neff, Alberts & Peters, 2014, p. 794). This leads to an increased probability of trying again following a failure instead of giving up (Neely, Schallert, Mohammed, Roberts & Chen, 2009). On the contrary, self-esteem is performance based; therefore, as long as the individual is able to maintain the expectations of self and others, the individual can maintain a high self-esteem (Hwang, Kim, Yang, & Yang, 2016), consequently when failure is experienced, real or perceived, self-esteem is greatly affected (Neff & Vonk,

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