Self-Evaluations and Performance: Evidence from Adolescence

Oliver Himmler and Tobias Koenig
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Tobias Steffen König

Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) from Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät

Abstract: A positive view of the self is often portrayed as a valuable asset in the sense that it can have performance enhancing properties. Using data on self-esteem - the most fundamental manifestation of positive self evaluations - and high school grade point averages of American students we produce results in line with this idea and find a positive link between favorable self-evaluations and higher levels of educational performance. However, when we exploit exogenous variation in self-esteem due to adolescent skin problems in order to account for the possible endogeneity of self-esteem, this finding is reversed and we obtain a negative effect on performance. We discuss mechanisms that may generate such an adverse causal effect of positive self-evaluations, and conclude that self-esteem and effort need not always be complements but can actually be substitutes.

Keywords: Self-evaluations; Self-esteem; Non-cognitive Skills; Human Capital; Performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2012-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu, nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://diskussionspapiere.wiwi.uni-hannover.de/pdf_bib/dp-507.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:han:dpaper:dp-507

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) from Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Heidrich, Christian ().