SELF-ESTEEM DURING EMERGING ADULTHOOD whether changes in academic achievement are associated with 4 years 1987 beca children go through hange.Weknow of nore rch that directly addre r h heir s elf-esteem will be negatively i ted wher fail to mo Because the transition to college involves changes in schoo ir un other at hi expectation may parallel the transition to junior high school.Stuc s of the for grade Thus.given the tendency for n cordingly,we believe that the transition to college long s research has s found little or no change in mean levels of ple who think the will receive better grades than th he college years ntrollin g for actual grad Academic Achievement and Self-Esteem expectations about th r grades show in of the most salient features of the transition from high f residualized d in th self-enha ent liter y im lash with t Perceived Change in Self-Esteem (Marsh Hat 20031.Give .o published studies have ind esteem has changed to actu report large changes in the their college des and the actual grades the cople hat sc and Hattie's (1982)meta-analysis (e.g druff. 19g3 Woodruff&Birren.1972).The discrepa ooint average [GPA].test scores,etc. was 21.In iggests that not be ate a tine.DuB tend to d their sel n Ross resp (st rdized beta we Addit and act ality chan studi es have that c elated For exampl lohal sel previous arch has found that higher levels of e (Costa McCrac,1989: Costa. selr-hcleaiticularlyd oins et a academic achievement.However.these studies have not examined between perceived and actual change in the Big Five duringmons, Blyth, Van Cleave, & Bush, 1979; Wigfield & Eccles, 1994). However, the findings regarding this claim are somewhat inconsistent (Blyth, Simmons, & Bush, 1978; Hirsch & Rapkin, 1987; Nottleman, 1987), perhaps because children go through puberty and transition to middle and junior high school at different ages. Thus, a more homogenous transition such as the transition into college (where maturational changes may be less likely to play a role) is needed for studying the impact of a potentially stressful life transition on self-esteem development. Because the transition to college involves changes in school environment, social ties, expectations from others, and expecta￾tions for oneself, self-esteem change during the transition to col￾lege may parallel the transition to junior high school. Studies of the transition to adolescence suggest that the experience of changing school contexts can result in an immediate negative impact on self-esteem. Accordingly, we believe that the transition to college constitutes a developmental turning point that, on average, nega￾tively impacts the self-esteem of young adults. In summary, pre￾vious research has found little or no change in mean levels of self-esteem from the beginning to the end of college. However, these studies have not examined change periodically throughout the college years. Academic Achievement and Self-Esteem One of the most salient features of the transition from high school to college is the increasing level of academic rigor and competitiveness that most students experience. This has been described as moving from being a “big fish in a little pond” to being a “little fish in a big pond.” This transition has been shown to negatively impact self-esteem as students’ high initial expecta￾tions clash with the reality of competing with other “big fish” for good grades, and the inevitable failure that follows for many of them (Marsh & Hau, 2003). Given the centrality of academic achievement in the college context, we focused on how the self￾esteem trajectory is shaped by students’ initial expectations for their college grades and the actual grades they end up receiving. In general, the research literature suggests that school grades are positively associated with high self-esteem. For example, in Hans￾ford and Hattie’s (1982) meta-analysis, the estimated effect size between various self-beliefs (e.g., self-esteem, self-acceptance, academic self-concept, etc.) and various academic outcomes (e.g., grade-point average [GPA], test scores, etc.) was .21. In a more recent meta-analysis, researchers examined the prospective influ￾ence of self-beliefs on academic achievement, in student samples that spanned pre-school to college (Valentine, DuBois, & Cooper, 2004). Results of this meta-analysis indicated that self-beliefs positively predicted later academic achievement, with an estimated effect size (standardized Beta weight) of .08. Additionally, Marsh and Craven (2006) provided evidence for reciprocal influence: Self-beliefs in the academic domain positively predicted later academic achievement, and, conversely, academic achievement positively predicted later self-beliefs; however, these effects held only for academic self-concept, not global self-esteem. In sum￾mary, previous research has found that higher levels of self￾esteem, particularly domain-specific self-esteem (i.e., academic self-beliefs), are concurrently and longitudinally associated with academic achievement. However, these studies have not examined whether changes in academic achievement are associated with changes in self-esteem across 4 years of college. We also examined the influence of expected grades on self￾esteem change. We know of no research that directly addresses this question, but previous research has consistently shown that college students have inflated expectations about their grades (Beyer, 1999; Garavalia & Gredler, 2002; Nowell & Alston, 2007; Sva￾num & Aigner, 2011; Wendorf, 2002), raising the possibility that self-esteem will be negatively impacted when students fail to meet their unrealistic expectations. Another related line of research shows that highly narcissistic students are more likely to expect high grades than less narcissistic students, independent of their actual ability (Farwell & Wohlwend-Lloyd, 1998), suggesting that overly inflated self-views are associated with inflated expectations for grades. Thus, given the tendency for narcissistic individuals to report high self-esteem, we expect to find a link between high expected grades and higher levels of self-esteem. However, over the long term, as narcissistic illusions about getting straight A’s confront the objective reality of academic mediocrity, we expect that people who think they will receive better grades than they actually receive will show declines in self-esteem over time. To address this question, we examined the effects of expected grades on self-esteem change, controlling for actual grades. By partialing actual grades out of expected grades, we are taking “reality” out of their expectations and examining whether people who have unre￾alistically positive expectations about their grades show increases or decreases in self-esteem over time (this is a variant on the use of residualized discrepancy scores in the self-enhancement litera￾ture; Kwan, John, Kenny, Bond, & Robins, 2004; Schriber & Robins, 2012). Perceived Change in Self-Esteem To our knowledge, no published studies have compared indi￾viduals’ perceptions of how their self-esteem has changed to actual change in their self-esteem scores. However, related research sug￾gests that people retrospectively report large changes in their personality, despite showing relatively minor changes in their personality test scores (Fleeson & Heckhausen, 1997; Haslam, Fox, & Whelan, 2007; Robins, Noftle, Trzesniewski, & Roberts, 2005; Staudinger, Bluck, & Herzberg, 2003; Wilson & Ross, 2001; Woodruff, 1983; Woodruff & Birren, 1972). The discrepancy between folk notions of substantial and often dramatic personality change and empirical findings indicating modest, gradual person￾ality change suggests that people may not be very accurate at describing their own personality development. These findings are consistent with theorizing that people tend to derogate past selves in order to make their current self feel better (Wilson & Ross, 2001), a process that would tend to decrease the correspondence between perceived and actual personality change. The few studies have that correlated individual differences in perceived personality change with actual changes in personality have produced mixed results. For example, Costa, McCrae, and colleagues concluded from their research that people’s perceptions of how their Big Five scores have changed over time are largely inaccurate (Costa & McCrae, 1989; Herbst, McCrae, Costa, Fea￾ganes, & Siegler, 2000). In contrast, Robins et al. (2005) pointed to modest but statistically significant correlations (r
.15 to .33) between perceived and actual change in the Big Five during This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. SELF-ESTEEM DURING EMERGING ADULTHOOD 3