Abstract
Studies have indicated that parental authority may or may not modify adolescent self-esteem (SE). This study drew on 343 college students to determine the relationship of adolescents' self-esteem to three familial variables: (1) parental permissiveness; (2) authoritarianism; and (3) authoritativeness, and three cognitive variables: (1) high standards; (2) self-criticism; (3) and overgeneralization. For the cognitive factors, researchers found that nearly 42% of SE variance was linked to overgeneralization. This significant finding suggests that a person's tendency to overgeneralize failure in a specific domain to a more general sense of personal inadequacy has far more implications for SE than either maintaining high standards for one's personal performance or self-criticism. While the variables of parental authoritativeness and authoritarianism were predictive of SE, accounting for nearly 17% of the variance when excluding cognitive factors, the effects of these familial variables were overshadowed by the cognitive factors. This influence of cognitive variables on SE was particularly pronounced among female respondents. The inclusion of the cognitive domain in this study served to temper a potential overemphasis upon the role of parental authority in SE development. This report includes four tables which present statistical findings. Contains 27 references. (RJM)