The Importance Of Self-Esteem

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Self-esteem is typically refers to as an overall sense of worthiness and importance of the self (Rosenberg, 1965). During the period of adolescence, individuals undergo substantial biological, psychological and social changes, and their newly developed cognitive abilities enable them to construct a more complicated self-identity (Harter, 1993; Gecas & Burke, 1995). Global self-esteem can indicates adolescents’ positive or negative evaluation towards the self under these changes. In fact, self-esteem acts as a protective mechanism from problematic psychosocial outcomes such as delinquency, dropout from schools, and psychopathology (Owen, 1994; Mecca, Smelser, & Vasconcellos, 1989; Gecas & Burke, 1995). And high self-esteem is found to promote…show more content…
Nonetheless, the focus of traditional measure of self-esteem have been biased towards an independent self construal (Singelis, Bond, Sharkey, & Lai, 1999), which may plays a less significant role in collectivism cultures. Diener and Diener (1995) have showed that the link between self-esteem and life satisfaction is weaker in collectivistic cultures. To address this cultural difference, a measure of collective self-esteem that can capture what might be called interdependent self-esteem, is needed (Luhtanen & Crocker,…show more content…
This study will adopt Bush (2000)’s framework, and view conformity to parental expectations as reflection of one’s connectedness with parents. Moderate adolescent conformity to parents are considered instrumental and favorable because it provides a secure base of primary bond from which healthy self-concepts can developed (Peterson & Gilkey, 1996; Peterson, Bush, & Supple, 1999). In fact, researchers generally assert that a moderate degree of adolescent conformity is critical for the development of effective cooperation and social relationships (Peterson et al., 1999; Youniss & Smollar, 1985). Cultrual differences in regards to conformity also exists. Empirical and theretical studies have proposed that collectivistic cultures assign greater piority to conformity to parental expectations than those from individualisic societies (Zhang & Thomas, 1994; Triandis, 1995; Bronfenbrenner,

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