The Relationship between Self-Esteem, Self-Reinforcement, and the Internal-External Personality Dimension

Previous evidence has suggested that the personality constructs, internal-external control (IE), self-reinforcement (SR), and self-esteem (SE) may be related to each other. With the use of college Ss, three measures of SE were correlated with each other and with IE and SR scores. Significant Pearson r correlations were found for IE and SR (−.60), SE and IE (−.18), and SE and SR (.31). Additionally, the three measures of SE used were significantly related. It was suggested that these three factors may be aspects of a broader response tendency much as the measures of SE seem to reflect different aspects of a global SE construct.