In plain language
Does feeling good about yourself lead to better friendships and support, or does having supportive people around you build your self-esteem? Despite endless self-help books on self-esteem, surprisingly little research had pinned down which direction the relationship actually runs. This study followed 961 Australian adolescents (average age 13.4 at the start) across five yearly assessments, measuring their self-esteem along with both the quality and the size of their social support networks.
Using structural equation modeling, the researchers tested three competing possibilities: that self-esteem comes first (an antecedent model), that social support comes first (a consequence model), and that each influences the other (a reciprocal model). The results clearly favored the antecedent model. Adolescents with higher self-esteem went on to report increasing quality of social support, and to a lesser degree larger support networks, over time. The reverse pathway — social support leading to later self-esteem — was not supported.
The findings challenge sociometer theory, which treats self-esteem as a mere gauge of social acceptance rather than a driver of behavior. Instead, they suggest that how teenagers feel about themselves shapes how they build and maintain supportive relationships across the high school years, with implications for helping adolescents develop higher quality support structures.
Key findings
- Self-esteem reliably predicted increasing levels of social support quality and social support network size across five yearly time points.
- The consequence model was not supported: neither social support quality nor network size significantly predicted later self-esteem.
- The self-esteem effect was most reliable for perceived quality of support, compared with perceptions of support network size.
- A model in which the self-esteem effect was consistent over time provided an adequate account of the data, indicating stability of the effect across the five waves.
- The results are inconsistent with sociometer theory, which holds that self-esteem merely reflects, rather than influences, social relations.
- The study drew on 961 adolescents (mean age 13.41 years at baseline) assessed annually over 4 years, analyzed with cross-lagged structural equation models.
How to cite
APA
Marshall, S. L., Parker, P. D., Ciarrochi, J., & Heaven, P. C. L. (2013). Is self-esteem a cause or consequence of social support? A 4-year longitudinal study. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12176
BibTeX
@article{marshall2013is,
title = {Is Self-Esteem a Cause or Consequence of Social Support? A 4-Year Longitudinal Study},
author = {Marshall, Sarah L. and Parker, Phillip D. and Ciarrochi, Joseph and Heaven, Patrick C. L.},
journal = {Child Development},
year = {2013},
doi = {10.1111/cdev.12176}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
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Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.