ADOLESCENTS POSSIBLE SELVES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO GLOBAL SELF-ESTEEM

Recent research indicates that adolescent girls' self-esteem is lower than that of boys, and adolescence has been identified as a particular ly problematic period for female self-esteem. However many studies use global self-esteem measures that mask important differences within th e domains of self-concept that contribute to self-esteem. Further some self-esteem measures assess components of male self-esteem but overlo ok aspects of female self-esteem. The possible selves approach was use d to identify categories of adolescent male and female self-concept th at correlate with self-esteem. Subjects were 212 high-school students. The sample was primarily (96%) Caucasian. Results indicate that femal e self-esteem is related to perceived likelihood of hoped-for and fear ed possible selves in multiple domains, whereas male self-esteem is re lated only to the likelihood of one domain of hoped-for possible selve s.