Self-esteem and satisfaction with social relationships across time

Who wrote this article? And how was that experience?

dr. Joanne Chung invited me (Lisanne de Moor) to do this project together with dr. Jaap Denissen and and several other people somewhere in the summer between the first and second year of the IDA Research Master. At first a rather straightforward project, it soon turned out to be quite complicated when we decided on a statistical approach that, while sophisticated, was for me very much undiscovered territory. Although the project was therefore at times a bit of a pain in the butt, it was also a very useful experience for me in terms of doing analyses, writing a manuscript, and managing the dynamics of a large research team. It took us over 3 years to complete, but it was a very useful experience for sure!

Here you can read what the article is about:

Research on the longitudinal association between self-esteem and satisfaction with social relationships has led to ambiguous conclusions regarding the temporal order and strength of this relation. Existing studies have examined this association across intervals ranging from days to years, leaving it unclear as to what extent differences in timing may explain differences across studies. In the present study, we used continuous time structural equation models (i.e., CT-SEM) to examine cross-lagged relations between the constructs, and also distinguished between-person differences from within-person processes (i.e., RI-CT-SEM). We analyzed 10 years of annual data from the Longitudinal Internet Studies of the Social Sciences (N = 14,741). When using CT-SEM, we found a bidirectional positive relation between self-esteem and satisfaction with social relationships, with larger effects over longer intervals. When using RI-CT-SEM, we found the largest effects of self-esteem and satisfaction with social relationships across intervals of 1 year, with smaller effect sizes at both shorter and longer intervals. In addition, the effect of fluctuations in people’s satisfaction with social relationships on fluctuations in their self-esteem was greater than the reverse effect. Our results highlight the importance of considering time when examining the relation between self-esteem and interpersonal outcomes and likely psychological constructs in general.

Do you want to read the whole article? You can find it here!

de Moor, E. L., Denissen, J. J. A., Emons, W. H. M., Bleidorn, W., Luhmann, M., Orth, U., & Chung, J. M. (2021). Self-esteem and satisfaction with social relationships across time. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 120(1), 173–191. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000379