Children develop self-esteem by age 5, much earlier than thought, according to research that suggests children gain either a positive or negative view of themselves before they begin formal schooling.
The researchers found that self-esteem at age 5 is as strong as that measured in adults.
“We were surprised to find how strong it was,” said Dario Cvencek, a research scientist at the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and a co-author of the study. “The first five years seems to be a foundation on which children build for the rest of their lives.”
Still, self-esteem can change — positively or negatively — as children grow, Cvencek said. “At age 5, it's developed and already pretty strong,” he said. “But any traumatic experience can affect you. We do think it's malleable, but it starts a lot earlier than previously thought.”
The findings, published in the January 2016 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, stem from a new test designed to measure self-esteem in 5-year-olds, the youngest age group to be measured.
Previous tests of self-esteem required children to be able to read and to be able to understand what is meant by being a good or bad person, Cvencek said. “Preschoolers can answer questions about narrow, concrete skills, such as ‘I am good at running,' or ‘I'm good at letters,' ” he said.
So researchers gave the 5-year-olds several flags and played a game in which they were told some of the flags were “me” and some “not me” and asked them to respond with the flags to a series of positive and negative words. The children had to combine words and press buttons on a computer to signal whether they associated the “good” or “bad” words with the “me” flags or not.
More than 230 children from the Seattle area participated in the study, which found that about 90 percent of the children had a positive self-esteem, while just 10 percent expressed a negative self-esteem.
