Am I a good person? Academic correlates of explicit and implicit self-esteem during early childhood.

ABSTRACT

Implicit and explicit self-esteem are not commonly measured in the same children. Using a cross-sectional design, data from 354 Croatian children (184 girls) in Grade 1 (Mage = 7.55 years) and Grade 5 (Mage = 11.58 years) were collected in Spring 2019. All children completed explicit and implicit self-esteem measures; math and language grades were obtained. For the explicit measure, older children showed lower self-esteem than younger children, and girls showed lower self-esteem than boys. For the implicit measure, there were no age effects, and girls showed higher self-esteem than boys. Although both types of self-esteem were positively associated with academic achievement, implicit self-esteem was associated more strongly with language than with math achievement. Discussion is provided about why self-esteem relates to academic achievement during childhood.