Self-esteem and body esteem: Effects of gender, age, and weight

Three studies explored how youngsters' self-esteem and body esteem may be related to age, gender, and relative weight and to each other. Study 1 involved 379 8- to 12-years-olds and Study 2, 85 13- to 15-year-olds; Study 3 involved two samples (76 8- to 10-year-olds; 85 11- to 13-year-olds) tested twice over 2 years. Self-esteem was assessed with Harter's (1985b, 1988) Self-Perception Profile, which taps global self-worth and self-evaluations in specific domains. Body esteem was assessed with the Revised Body-Esteem Scale (Mendelson & White, 1993), which yielded two measures (BE-Appearance and BE-Weight). Generally, self-esteem was not related to relative weight, but was associated with feelings about one's appearance. Body-esteem measures were inversely related to relative weight (although only BE-Weight was uniquely so) and were also associated with global self-worth. Self-esteem and body esteem were stable over 2 years.