A Century of Self-Esteem

Abstract

Google n-grams can be used by researchers to track changes across time in the use of specific words and phrases. N-grams includes a corpus of approximately 15 million published books (in various languages). In this chapter we use google n-grams to illustrate temporal trends in the use of the word “self-esteem” in English-language books published from 1900-2000. We first review past research on temporal trends in selfesteem and related traits. Next, we discuss some limitations of this research, and how ngrams can help to address such limitations. Finally, we use the “self-esteem” n-gram data to conduct a quantitative sociohistorical analysis of three potential factors that are hypothesized to cause societal-level shifts in self-esteem. These factors are derived from ecological models of human development (e.g. Bronfenbrenner, 1979), and range from the immediate everyday social context of individuals (e.g. family, school), to a mid-level context (e.g. community), to the broader cultural context (e.g. general political and economic environment). We present evidence for these potential causes of changes in the importance of self-esteem. Based on this evidence, we make recommendations as to the best focus of efforts to quell the rising tide of unrealistic self-esteem.