Investigating the Relationship of Global and Moment-to-Moment Self-Esteem in Adult Affective states and Depression

Buschman, Isabelle (2025) Investigating the Relationship of Global and Moment-to-Moment Self-Esteem in Adult Affective states and Depression. Master thesis, Psychology.

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Abstract

Self-esteem is closely linked to depression and affect, yet much of the literature has focused mainly on global levels of self-esteem, rather than its moment-to-moment variability. Understanding this variability in self-esteem may offer additional insights into emotional vulnerability and resilience that global assessments might miss. This study tested the following hypotheses: H1) global self-esteem is positively associated with positive affect (PA), and negatively associated with negative affect (NA) (H2) and symptoms of depression (H3). It was further expected that moment-to-moment self-esteem variability would be negatively associated with PA (H4), and positively associated with NA (H5) and symptoms of depression (H6), even after accounting for global self-esteem. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted using secondary data from a large Dutch cross-sectional crowdsourcing study (N = 1126; Van der Krieke et al., 2015), which included a 30-day EMA diary protocol with three daily self-esteem measurements. Moment-to-moment self-esteem variability was operationalized as the RMSSD across all 90 measurements per participant. Results showed that global self-esteem was strongly positively associated with PA, and strongly negatively associated with NA and depressive symptoms. In contrast, moment-to-moment variability in self-esteem showed only weak associations with these outcomes, and became non-significant after controlling for global self-esteem. These findings suggest that global self-esteem plays a more central role in understanding emotional vulnerability, rather than moment-to-moment fluctuations in a non-clinical adult sample. This highlights the need for clinical interventions that target on enhancing and maintaining stable levels of self-esteem. Keywords: global self-esteem, moment-to-moment variability in self-esteem, depression, positive affect, negative affect

Item Type:	Thesis (Master)
Supervisor name:	Bennik, E.C. and Nauta, M.H.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	Clinical Psychology (CP) [Master Psychology]
Date Deposited:	09 Dec 2025 07:21
Last Modified:	09 Dec 2025 07:21
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/6001

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