Global Self-Esteem in Relation to Structural Models of Personality and Affectivity

Three studies examined global self-esteem in relation to structural models of personality and affectivity. In every study, self-esteem was strongly negatively correlated with Neuroticism/ Negative Affectivity and moderately to strongly related to Extraversion/ Positive Affectivity. Additional findings, however, revealed that self-esteem is better viewed at the lower order level. For instance, global self-esteem correlated -.79 with the Depression facet of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory ( P. T. Costa, Jr., & R. R. McCrae, 1992 ) in Study 3. Moreover, confirmatory factor analyses produced very strong correlations between self-esteem and depression in both Study 2 ( r = −.82) and Study 3 ( r = −.86). Taken together, the data suggest that global self-esteem measures define one end of a bipolar continuum, with trait indicators of depression defining the other.