Influence of individual and group identity salience in the global self-esteem of youth

Combined 9 specific self-ratings into a scale that used various weightings in an attempt to maximize correlations with global self-esteem measured by 2 content-free scales and to determine whether the content-free scales would tap the same self-esteem dimensions as the summated 9-factor scale. Ss were 1,528 7th, 9th, and 11th graders. Results suggest that measures based on summations of a large number of specific self-ratings tap a somewhat different phenomenon than content-free global scales. The most effective weighting of specific dimensions for predicting global self-esteem depended on group-identity salience rather than individual-identity salience--group means of the importance of the separate self-evaluation dimensions rather than each S's self-rating of the importance of that dimension. This result held even when interactive models of weighting were used. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).