Washington : By age five children have a sense of self-esteem comparable in strength to that of adults, according to a new study.
Since self-esteem tends to remain relatively stable across one’s lifespan, the study suggests that this important personality trait is already in place before children begin kindergarten, reports PTI.
“Our work provides the earliest glimpse to date of how preschoolers sense their selves,” said lead author Dario Cvencek, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS). “We found that as young as 5 years of age self-esteem is established strongly enough to be measured and we can measure it using sensitive techniques,” said Cvencek.
Researchers used a newly developed test to assess implicit self-esteem in more than 200 five-year-old children – the youngest age yet to be measured. “Some scientists consider preschoolers too young to have developed a positive or negative sense about themselves. Our findings suggest that self-esteem, feeling good or bad about yourself, is fundamental,” said co-author, Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of I-LABS. “It is a social mindset children bring to school with them, not something they develop in school,” Meltzoff said.
Until now no measurement tool has been able to detect self-esteem in preschool-aged children. This is because existing self-esteem tests require the cognitive or verbal sophistication to talk about a concept like “self” when asked probing questions by adult experimenters.
