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The development and validation of the Relational

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Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 2012

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2012.00946.x

Personality and Social Psychology

The development and validation of the Relational Self-Esteem Scale
HONGFEI DU, RONNEL B. KING and PEILIAN CHI
The University of Hong Kong, China

Du, H., King, R.B. & Chi, P. (2012). The development and validation of the Relational Self-Esteem Scale. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology.
According to the tripartite model of the self (Brewer & Gardner, 1996), the self consists of three aspects: personal, relational, and collective. Correspondingly, individuals can achieve a sense of self-worth through their personal attributes (personal self-esteem), relationship with significant others (relational
self-esteem), or social group membership (collective self-esteem). Existing measures on personal and collective self-esteem are available in the literature;
however, no scale exists that assesses relational self-esteem. The authors developed a scale to measure individual differences in relational self-esteem and
tested it with two samples of Chinese university students. Between and within-network approaches to construct validation were used. The scale showed
adequate internal consistency reliability and results of the confirmatory factor analysis showed good fit. It also exhibited meaningful correlations with theoretically relevant constructs in the nomological network. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Key words: Personal self-esteem, relational self-esteem, collective self-esteem, significant others.
Hongfei Du, Faculty of Education, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. Tel: +852-2241-5418; e-mail: hongfei@hku.hk

INTRODUCTION
Recent research has distinguished the three different dimensions
of the self: personal, relational, and collective (Brewer & Chen,
2007; Brewer & Gardner, 1996). The personal self refers to the
differentiated and individuated self-concept which emphasizes
ones uniqueness. The relational self refers to self-concept which
is formed in connection with significant others (e.g. family and
best friends). The collective self refers to self-concept that is built
on relationships with social groups (e.g. nationality and ethnicity).
On the other hand, from a cross-cultural perspective, Markus
and Kitayama (1991) have posited a distinction between independent and interdependent self-construals and elaborated upon the
cultural influences on self-construals: people in individualistic
cultures tend to define themselves in terms of internal attributes
such as abilities and values and are more likely to hold an independent self-construal, whereas those in collectivistic cultures
tend to define themselves in terms of their relationships with others (especially significant others) and are more likely to have an
interdependent self-construal. As Brewer and Gardner claimed
(1996), independent self-construal is closely associated with personal self and those with an independent self-construal would
deem their personal self to be more important. On the other hand,
interdependent self-construal is more closely related to relational
self and those with an interdependent self-construal would attach
more significance to their relational selves.
Based on these, researchers have developed different instruments to measure these dimensions of the self (for a review, see
Brewer & Chen, 2007). For example, Kashima and Hardie (2000)
developed the Relational, Individual, and Collective Self-Aspects
Scale to assess the three facets of self-concept. In their study, they
validated the three-factor structure of the scale which emphasized
the importance of distinguishing among the three self-aspects.
Corresponding to the different self-aspects (i.e., personal, relational, and collective), individuals can evaluate their self-worth in
relation to these three dimensions (Breckler & Greenwald, 1986).
The evaluative motivations associated with the personal, rela-

tional, and collective self can be referred to as personal selfesteem, relational self-esteem, and collective self-esteem respectively. Personal self-esteem refers to how individuals perceive
themselves and their personal attributes such as competence and
talent (Rosenberg, 1965). The bulk of the research has been conducted on personal self-esteem, and it has been found that personal self-esteem is positively associated with mental health,
happiness, and ones capacity for creative and productive work
(for a review, see Taylor & Brown, 1988). Recent research has
also emphasized the importance of collective self-esteem
(Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992) which refers to how individuals perceive themselves with respect to the value they place on their
social group. Collective self-esteem has been found to be associated with ingroup bias (e.g., Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990) and psychological well-being (e.g., Crocker, Luhtanen, Blaine &
Broadnax, 1994; Zhang, 2005). However, there has been a dearth
of research on relational self-esteem.
A few studies have tried to distinguish the function of relational
self-esteem from personal self-esteem and indicated that relational
self-esteem is a distinct construct and has a different function from
personal self-esteem. For example, in a study conducted by
Harter, Waters, and Whitesell (1998), they found that when adolescents evaluated their self-worth across relational contexts (e.g.,
with parents, teachers, male classmates, and female classmates),
these four aspects of relational self-worth showed differential correlations with global self-worth (Harter et al., 1998; see also Wagner, 2009). De Cremer and Sedikides (2008) investigated the
influence of procedural fairness on self-esteem and found that
when college students enjoyed a positive reputation and when
they received unfair treatment, their relational self-esteem which
was assessed as their judgment of how their supervisors evaluated
them, rather than their personal self-esteem decreased. Snell Jr
and Finney (2002) developed the Relational Assessment Questionnaire to assess relational self-esteem, relational depression,
and relational preoccupation with regard to intimate relationships.
In their study, relational self-esteem as regards intimate relationships was found to be negatively associated with depression. Neff

 2012 The Authors.

Scandinavian Journal of Psychology  2012 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington
Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. ISSN 0036-5564.

2 H. Du et al.
and Suizzo (2006) adapted Harter et al.s (1998) measures of relational self-esteem and created a measure of relational self-worth
in romantic relationships. They also found a negative correlation
between relational self-esteem and depression.
Taken together, these studies show relational self-esteem as a
distinct construct that has a meaningful relationship to theoretically relevant variables. However, a limitation of these previous
measures of relational self-esteem is that they focused on assessing self-worth in specific relational contexts (e.g., school, romantic relationships) so that their applicability to the general
population is limited. In addition, compared to family and best
friends, school teachers, classmates, and university supervisors are
more likely to be considered as a social group that is involved in
the collective self rather than relational self (Andersen & Cole,
1990; Andersen, Glassman & Gold, 1998). Hence, the current
research confined significant others to the family, which can
include parent, uncle/aunt, grandparent, children, sibling, and
partner, etc., and best friends. In this way, the scope of the relational self is clearly distinct from collective self so that the measure on relational self-esteem would have the potential to
accurately assess individuals self-worth derived from their relationships with significant others.
A measure of global relational self-esteem which assesses individuals membership in the circle of family and best friends would
be helpful in advancing theory and research on the motivational
aspects of the self. To date, the greatest amount of research on
self-esteem has focused on personal self-esteem. The development
of the Collective Self-Esteem Scale (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992),
however, has spurred research beyond personal self-esteem to
some extent (e.g., Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990; Crocker et al.,
1994). A lot of research has shown that the relational self tends to
play a more significant role than the collective self, especially in
collectivistic cultures (Brewer & Chen, 2007). Hence, we suggest
that its concomitant, relational self-esteem, would be a good predictor of social behavior and mental health, and its investigation
would help display a fuller picture of the motivational aspects of
the self.
The notion of relational self-esteem has implications for crosscultural research. Although many theorists have distinguished the
relational self from the personal self and the collective self (e.g.,
Breckler & Greenwald, 1986; Triandis, 1989), most cross-cultural
research on self-esteem has focused only on self-worth at the individual level (for a review, see Heine, Lehman, Markus & Kitayama, 1999) which may be construed as a form of Western bias.
Markus and Kitayama (1991) summarized the difference between
American and Japanese self-construals. They proposed that East
Asians with a more salient interdependent self-construal would
primarily address relationships with significant others, more than
the personal self or their relationship with large social groups.
Hence, the motives associated with the relational self might be
more informative than the motives associated with personal and
collective selves among East Asians.
Due to the need for a scale to assess self-worth in the context
of relationships with significant others, we developed the present
measure. Our Relational Self-Esteem Scale aims to assess individuals global self-evaluation primarily based on their relationships
with family and friends. Our rationale for this is that a global measure of relational self-esteem would parallel previous scales devel-

Scand J Psychol (2012)

oped to measure personal self-esteem and collective self-esteem

(e.g., Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992; Rosenberg, 1965) and will
prove helpful for researchers to compare the outcomes associated
with relational self-esteem to other types of self-esteem.
The scale we developed consists of two basic dimensions: (1)
association with family and best friends as significant others and
(2) ones value in relationships with significant others and the
value of significant others. As regards the first dimension, significant others are mostly confined to family and best friends (Chen,
Boucher & Tapias, 2006; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Perception
of warm relationships with parents and peers (i.e., parental attachment and peer attachment) has been found to be positively related
to ones self-esteem (Armsden & Greenberg, 1987; Greenberg,
Siegel & Leitch, 1983).
Even in collectivistic cultures, the scope of close others is not
much bigger than the one in individualistic cultures. For example,
in the Chinese culture, the family has been regarded as the basic
social unit since ancient times (Ho, 1998). In addition, individuals
in both individualistic and collectivistic cultures tend to consider
friends as a relational group which differs from strangers (e.g.,
Kobayashi & Greenwald, 2003; Tice, Butler, Muraven &
Stillwell, 1995). Hence, the relationship including family and
friends constitutes one dimension of the scale. As regards the second dimension, we included ones value in relationships with significant others and the value of significant others. Ones value in
relationships with significant others refers to individuals judgments of how worthy they are in relationships with significant
others. This sense of self-worth is different from personal selfworth (Rosenberg, 1965) in terms of its dependence on how much
an individual can contribute to his/her significant others, and is
different from collective self-worth (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992)
in terms of its target as it is limited to relationships with significant others rather than a global social group, such as a national or
ethnic group. The value of significant others refers to individuals
and perceived others judgments of how worthy their significant
others are. This is consistent with social identity theory (Tajfel &
Turner, 1986) which posits that self-worth can be derived both
from self-evaluation and others evaluation of ones social groups.
Given the crucial role of significant others in ones life, the internalized relationships with significant others may exert a great
impact upon ones self-concept and self-esteem (Baldwin, 1992)
and the influence from significant others on self-esteem would be
different from that derived from global social groups (Arbona &
Power, 2003; Armsden & Greenberg, 1987).
Two studies are reported in this paper. Study 1 will report on
the initial development of the Relational Self-Esteem Scale and
the use of both within-network and between-network approaches
to construct validation. Study 2 will report on the psychometric
properties of a revised measure of the Relational Self-Esteem
Scale which was modified from Study 1.

STUDY 1
Scale construction
We adopted a rational approach to construct the scale (Brown,
1983). We included the type of relationship and the perspective of

 2012 The Authors.

Scandinavian Journal of Psychology  2012 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Relational Self-Esteem Scale

Scand J Psychol (2012)

evaluation as two dimensions. There are two types of relationship:

family and friends, and two perspectives of evaluation: ones
value in relationships with significant others and the value of
significant others. Hence, the scale appears as a 2 2 construction
and contains eight items (two items in every cell). In addition, the
wording of the items was modeled after the Rosenberg
Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) because Rosenbergs scale
has shown good reliability and validity across cultures. Thus, the
present Relational Self-Esteem Scale attempted to measure how
individuals valued themselves in their group of family and friends
(e.g., In general, I am glad to be a member of my circle of
friends) and how they valued their own relational group of family
or friends (e.g., I am proud of my family). Within these eight
items, we used two negatively worded items, that is, I feel I do
not have much to offer to my family and I often feel I am a
useless member of my circle of friends. Responses to the scale
were made on a four-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree,
4 = strongly agree) with higher values indicating a greater degree
of endorsement.
Study 1 adopted a construct validation approach (King & Du,
2011; Marsh, 1997; Martin, 2007) to the empirical assessment of
the validity of our Relational Self-Esteem Scale. Studies that
adopt this approach can be classified as within- or betweennetwork studies. Within-network construct validation refers to the
examination of the factor structure and factor correlation matrix
using statistical techniques such as reliability analysis, exploratory
factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). On the
other hand, between-network validation involves examining patterns of relationships between the instrument and other theoretically related constructs (Marsh, 1997) through looking at its
correlations. Study 1 utilized both approaches. First, we
conducted a within-network study by focusing on the results of
the internal consistency coefficients and the results of the CFA.
Second, we conducted the between-network study by looking at
the relationship of our scale with other theoretically relevant variables. In line with research on relational self-esteem showing a
positive correlation with personal self-esteem (Harter et al.,
1998), we predicted that relational self-esteem would positively
correlate with personal self-esteem. We also predicted that relational self-esteem would correlate with the collectivism construct,
the degree to which individuals emphasize social interdependence,
connectedness, and mutual deference as dominant values, but not
with the individualism construct, the degree to which individuals
emphasize independence, autonomy in choice and action, and
social assertiveness (Triandis, Bontempo, Villareal, Asai & Lucca,
1988). In addition, considering that women have been found to
show stronger relational self-construal than men (Cross, Bacon &
Morris, 2000), in a related vein, we predicted that women would
report higher relational self-esteem than men. Thus we also investigated possible gender differences in terms of relational selfesteem.
Method
Participants. The relevant questionnaires were administered to
109 female and 47 male students with ages ranging from 17
to 29 (M = 21.65, SD = 2.16) at a university in Mainland,
China.

Instruments
Relational self-esteem. The eight-item Relational Self-Esteem
Scale was used to measure individual differences in global relational self-esteem.
Personal self-esteem. Personal self-esteem was measured with the
Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965), which comprised 10 items such as I feel that I have a number of good qualities and I take a positive attitude toward myself.
Individualism-collectivism. Triandis and Gelfands (1998) 16-item
scale on Individualism and Collectivism was used to measure
individualism and collectivism. The scale includes statements like
Id rather depend on myself than others and To me, pleasure
is spending time with others.
All the questionnaires used in this study used a four-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 4 = strongly agree) with higher
scores reflecting a greater endorsement of the construct.

Results and discussion

Preliminary analyses. Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics
and Cronbachs alpha reliabilities. Results indicated that all the
scales used had acceptable reliabilities (Nunally & Bernstein,
1994).
Confirmatory factor analyses. Normality was assessed by examining skewness and kurtosis values for each item. Absolute values
of skewness and kurtosis beyond 2 and 7, respectively, may imply
a lack of univariate normality (Finney & DiStefano, 2006). In our
study, skewness values ranged from 0.68 to 0.42, while kurtosis
ranged from 0.34 to 1.67. We also checked for outliers by looking at the Mahalanobis distance (D2). No such outliers were
found. Given that the data appear normally distributed, maximum
likelihood (ML) estimation was employed.
Table 2 presents the results of our confirmatory factor analysis.
We posited three different models: a one-factor model which
considers relational self-esteem as a unidimensional construct, a
two-factor family-friend model which posits a distinction between
family-related and friend-related items, and a two-factor self-significant others model which posits separating the self-value
in relationship to significant others from the value of significant
others.
Based on the understanding that multiple indices provided a
comprehensive evaluation of model fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999),
several goodness-of-fit indices were used. To check which model

Table 1. Descriptive statistics and Cronbachs alpha reliabilities for the

different scales

Relational self-esteem
Personal self-esteem
Individualism
Collectivism
Note: N = 156.

 2012 The Authors.

Scandinavian Journal of Psychology  2012 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

No. of
items

SD

Cronbachs
alpha

8
10
8
8

3.01
2.91
2.87
3.05

0.34
0.33
0.35
0.30

0.69
0.73
0.73
0.68

4 H. Du et al.

Scand J Psychol (2012)

Table 2. Goodness of fit indices for Model 1 (one-factor model), Model 2 (two-factor family-friend model), and Model 3 (two-factor self-significant others
model)

Model

v2

df

v2/df

RMSEA

NNFI or
TLI

CFI

GFI

AGFI

IFI

Change
in v2

Change
in df

P Value

Model 1 (one factor model)

Model 2 (family-friend model)
Model 3 (self-significant
others model)

29.73
26.22
26.23

19
18
18

0.06
0.10
0.10

1.57
1.46
1.46

0.06
0.05
0.05

0.92
0.93
0.93

0.94
0.96
0.96

0.96
0.96
0.96

0.92
0.93
0.92

0.95
0.96
0.96

3.51
3.51

1
1

0.06
0.06

Note: In all the models tested, the error terms for the two reversed items (item 3 and item 5) were correlated. Model 2 and Model 3 were compared
against Model 1.

would show a better fit to the data, we used the chi-square difference test.
Results of the CFA indicate that there were no significant differences between the one-factor model (Model 1) and two-factor
family-friends model (Model 2) or the two-factor self-significant
others model (Model 3) as shown through the non-significant chisquare difference tests (See Table 2). Model 1 showed good fit
with the data. The chi-square value was non-significant and the
chi-square to degrees of freedom ratio was less than 2. RMSEA
was less than the recommended cut-off of 0.08 and the TLI, CFI,
GFI, AGFI and IFI values were all greater than 0.90. Since Model
1 was the most parsimonious among the three proposed models,
we chose this model as the one that best represented the data.
These results seem to show that relational self-esteem can be characterized as a unidimensional construct.

way from the way they responded to positively worded items. To

eliminate the response bias when individuals answered the negatively worded items, we paraphrased the two negatively worded
items to become positively worded and conducted a second study
to further examine the validity as well as reliability. In addition, the
eighth item of our scale, In general, most people consider my family to be better than other families, also showed low correlation
and a non-significant factor loading in the CFA analysis. Chinese
participants might consider this item requiring them to draw a social
comparison between their own family and others. Because it is not
valued for people in a collectivistic cultural context to present selfserving or group-serving bias (Heine & Lehman, 1997), the
responses of participants to the eighth item might be influenced by
cultural norms. As such, we deleted this item in Study 2. We
retested this modified scale in the second study.

Correlations with other theoretically relevant constructs. Table 3

shows the zero-order correlations of relational self-esteem with
other theoretically related constructs.
The correlation table indicates that relational self-esteem was
positively correlated with collectivism (r = 0.52, p < 0.001), but
not significantly correlated with individualism. Relational selfesteem was also positively related with personal self-esteem.
These relationships are in line with our hypotheses.
Although Study 1 provided initial evidence for the validity of the
Relational Self-Esteem Scale, we found that the two negatively
worded items showed low correlations with other six positively
worded items and decreased the reliability of the scale. In addition,
for the CFA of the Relational Self-Esteem Scale, we had to correlate the errors associated with the two negatively worded items
because of the relatively large modification index associated with
these two items (MI = 13.00). In a study with the mass testing of
the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) across 53
nations, Schmitt & Allik (2005) found the same negative item
bias. This refers to the phenomenon whereby participants
responded to negatively worded items in a systematically different

Gender differences. An independent sample t-test was conducted

to compare the scores of male students and female students on
relational self-esteem. Surprisingly, results indicated that there
were no significant gender differences between male (M = 3.01,
SD = 0.35) and female (M = 3.01, SD = 0.32) students,
t(154) = 0.076, p = 0.94. In Study 2, we also examined this issue.

Table 3. Zero-order correlations with other theoretically relevant

variables (N = 156)

1.
2.
3.
4.

Relational self-esteem
Personal self-esteem
Collectivism
Individualism

0.57***

0.52***
0.15

0.09
0.04
0.24**

Note: ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.

STUDY 2
Method
Participants. Participants were 128 students from two universities
in Mainland, China. Of these, 8 participants did not complete the
scale, leaving the data of 73 female and 47 male students with an
average age of 20.28 (SD = 2.93) for further analysis.
Instruments. Participants completed the Relational Self-Esteem
Scale on a four-point Likert scale, and a demographic questionnaire. The Relational Self-Esteem Scale used was similar to the
one used in Study 1, except that the two negatively worded items
were changed into positively worded items and item 8 was deleted.

Results and discussion

The revised version of the Relational Self-Esteem Scale had a
higher reliability (a = 0.86, M = 2.60, SD = 0.49) compared to
the previous version. CFA was then conducted to assess the
within-network construct validity of the scale. Three CFA models
were tested similar to the one conducted in Study 1: a one-factor
model which considers relational self-esteem as a unidimensional

 2012 The Authors.

Scandinavian Journal of Psychology  2012 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

Relational Self-Esteem Scale

Scand J Psychol (2012)

construct (Model 1), a two-factor family-friend model which posits a distinction between family-related and friend-related items
(Model 2), and a two-factor self-significant others model which
posits separating the self-value in relationship to significant others
from the value of significant others (Model 3).
Similar to Study 1, results of the CFA indicated that there were
no significant differences between the one-factor model (Model 1)
and two-factor family-friends model (Models 2) or the two-factor
self-significant others model (Model 3) as shown through the nonsignificant chi-square difference tests (see Table 4), as such, we
adopted Model 1 considering it as the most parsimonious model.
Model 1 showed good fit with the data: RMSEA was less than
0.08, while the TLI, CFI, GFI, AGFI and IFI values were all
greater than 0.90. In addition, the chi-square to degrees of freedom ratio was less than 2 (see Table 4). All factor loadings were
also statistically significant (see Table 5).
Taken together, the results provide support to the construct
validity of our newly developed Relational Self-Esteem Scale. It
demonstrated acceptable reliability and also showed a good model
fit as evinced through the CFA. We found that relational selfesteem can be conceptualized as a unidimensional construct.
An independent sample t-test was also conducted to compare
the scores of males and females on relational self-esteem. Results
indicated that female students (M = 2.68, SD = 0.47) had a higher
degree of relational self-esteem compared to male students
(M = 2.47, SD = 0.51), t(118) = 2.36, p < 0.05.

GENERAL DISCUSSION
This paper proposed a relational self-esteem construct evaluated
in relation to significant others and developed the Relational SelfEsteem Scale. CFAs showed that the one-factor did not differ significantly from the alternative two-factor models. This was the
case for both Study 1 and Study 2. Because of this, we decided to
adopt the one-factor model given that it is more parsimonious.
Moreover, the validity of this one-factor model is also supported
in the literature. Significant others in the relational self include
family and best friends. Major theories relevant to relational self
consider these two resources to serve a combined function of the
self (Chen et al., 2006; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Thus, from a
theoretical perspective, the one-factor model is more reasonable
than the two-factor model which posits a distinction between family and best friends.
Moreover, another dimension is the distinction between ones
value in relationships with significant others and the value of
significant others. This distinction may be strongly influenced by
self-construal of sample. If participants have high interdependent
self-construal as the current research (i.e., Chinese), they would

include both their own values and the values of significant others
into their relational self-concept so that the one-factor model is
displayed among this population. If participants have high independent self-construal (e.g., North Americans), they may clearly
distinguish their own values from the values of significant others
so that the two-factor model may be revealed. It is a limitation
that the current research did not address this issue by cross-cultural validation. We believe that future research will offer a clear
answer to this question.
This scale also showed good internal consistency as evinced by
the acceptable Cronbachs alphas. The good-fit of the one-factor
model indicates that individuals may tend to consider relational
self-esteem as a unidimensional construct. This finding is not surprising among Chinese. East Asians have been found to have an
interdependent self-construal (Markus & Kitayama, 1991) and to
have a tendency to define the self by including significant others
(i.e., family, best friends) (Zhu, Zhang, Fan & Han, 2007). Given
that East Asians include significant others in their self-concept,
they might regard the goodness of significant others as the part of
their own self-esteem. A Chinese saying that The mothers honour increases as her sons position rises reflects the important
role that significant others play in terms of a Chineses self-worth.
Correlational analyses of the Relational Self-Esteem Scale with
other theoretically relevant constructs demonstrated between-network construct validity. Relational self-esteem and personal selfesteem both refer to the evaluation of self-worth, but differ with
regard to the sources of self-worth. The positive correlations
between the two types of self-esteem represented their commonality and relational, rather than personal, self-esteem positively correlating with the collectivism construct indicated that the former is
relevant with a group-based identity whereas the latter may not be
(Study 1).
It is interesting to find female participants showing a higher
relational self-esteem than male participants, but only in Study 2.
This result is consistent with previous research (Cross et al.,
2000) showing that females have a higher relational interdependent self-construal than males and that their relational selves are
more salient. In Study 1, we did not observe a significant gender
difference in relational self-esteem. This may be due to the lower
reliability of the Relational Self-Esteem Scale in Study 1. Future
research is needed to confirm the current finding.
Given the significant role of positive self-evaluation on mental
health (Taylor & Brown, 1988), we would predict that individuals
with a high relational self-esteem would also have higher life satisfaction. Although researchers have established that personal
self-esteem benefits mental health, recent research indicated that
collective and relational self-esteem are related to mental health
too. Collective self-esteem has been shown to be positively

Table 4. Goodness of fit indices for the final version of the Relational Self-Esteem Scale

Model

v2

df

v2/df

RMSEA

NNFI
or TLI

CFI

GFI

AGFI

IFI

Change
in v2

Change
in df

p value

Unidimensional model (Model 1)

Family-friend model (Model 2)
Self-significant others model
(Model 3)

23.85
23.41
21.95

14
13
13

0.048
0.037
0.056

1.70
1.80
1.69

0.07
0.08
0.08

0.96
0.95
0.96

0.97
0.97
0.97

0.95
0.95
0.95

0.90
0.89
0.90

0.97
0.97
0.98

0.44
1.9

1
1

0.51
0.17

Note: Model 2 and Model 3 were compared against Model 1.

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Scandinavian Journal of Psychology  2012 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

6 H. Du et al.

Scand J Psychol (2012)

Table 5. Item-total correlations, CFA loadings, p values for the

Relational Self-Esteem Scale

Items
1. I am a worthy member
of my circle of friends.
2. In general, Im glad to
be a member of my circle
of friends.
3. I feel I can have much to
offer to my family.
4. I am proud of my family.
5. I can help my friends a lot.
6. Overall, my circle of friends
is considered good by others.
7. I think my family is proud of me.

Corrected
p values for
item-total CFA
the CFA
correlation loading loadings
0.71

0.79

p < 0.001

0.69

0.76

p < 0.001

0.78

0.86

p < 0.001

0.67
0.45
0.64

0.73
0.45
0.67

p < 0.001
p < 0.001
p < 0.001

0.51

0.54

p < 0.001

associated with life satisfaction (Crocker et al., 1994; Zhang,

2005). In terms of relational self-esteem, Wagner (2009) examined the relationship between relational self-esteem and life satisfaction, in which relational self-esteem was measured with Aron
et al.s Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale (Aron, Aron & Smollan, 1992). This study revealed that relational self-esteem is positively associated with life satisfaction; moreover, relational selfesteem was negatively correlated with depression (Neff & Suizzo,
2006; Snell Jr & Finney, 2002). These findings suggest that in
addition to personal self-esteem, self-esteem derived from social
relationships (i.e., collective self-esteem, relational self-esteem)
would also contribute to psychological adjustment.
As we argued before, relational self-esteem in previous research
has been only explored in specific contexts or with specific relationships (e.g., school, classmate). Based on previous literature on
the scope of significant others and the profound influence of
significant others on different aspects of life, the Relational
Self-Esteem Scale developed in the current research clearly directs
participants to set up family and friends as target relationships so
that it has potential to increase the validity of assessing relational
self-esteem. Moreover, an advantage of the current scale is that it
does not limit significant others to specific relationships (e.g.,
romantic partners, classmates), which may not be applicable for
certain groups of people. Significant others as defined in the current research (e.g., family and best friends) is deemed to be more
universal and is more applicable to different individuals.
Compared to collective self-esteem, relational self-esteem
might be a more stable indicator of self-esteem in relationships
with others. Individuals derive relational self-esteem from their
relationship to significant others and this group is relatively
known and identifiable (e.g., parent, partner, and sibling) (Chen et
al., 2006). However, for collective self-esteem, the scope of the
social group is relatively indefinite and large individual differences confound the measurement. Meanwhile, it is possible that
individuals would consider significant others as a social group
(e.g., family) when they are asked to respond to collective selfesteem when the scope of social group is not specified as is the
case in the Collective Self-Esteem Scale (Luhtanen & Crocker,
1992). These could lead to ambiguity with regard to the interpretation of the scores given that there is a mismatch between what
the respondents think refers to the social groups and what the psy-

chologists using the Collective Self-Esteem Scale defines as the

social group. Hence, future research is needed to further investigate the relationship between relational and collective self-esteem
in specific contexts. Is relational self-esteem closely associated
with collective self-esteem and what factors moderate the relationship between them? Can relational and collective self-esteem be
activated separately and what contexts would determine the (joint)
activation? How does culture (individualism vs. collectivism)
influence the strength of the two forms of self-esteem? These
types of questions await future research.
Future research should also address how relational self-esteem
is relevant to other psychological constructs that are closely associated with relational self, such as relational self-construal (e.g.,
Cross et al., 2000), parental and peer attachment (e.g., Bartholomew
& Horowitz, 1991). Considering that relational self-esteem is
derived from the relationship with significant others, the quality of
relationship would influence to what extent one can attain a sense
of self-worth from significant others. For example, attachment
style may play a role in ones maintenance of relational selfesteem. Compared to people with a dismissing, preoccupied, or
fearful attachment relationship with significant others, those with a
secure attachment relationship may be more likely to believe in
their prominent roles in the relationship and thereby attain higher
relational self-esteem.
A limitation of our study was that the Relational Self-Esteem
Scale was only tested among Chinese who can be characterized as
collectivists. As mentioned before, Chinese define the self by
including significant others so that they might regard their own
value and the value of significant others as a global source of relational self-esteem. Indeed, the current study showed that the unidimensional model did not significantly differ compared to the
alternative two-factor models. However, in the Western culture,
results might be different and it might be possible that a two-factor model would be more appropriate for Westerners. Future studies are needed to test the Relational Self-Esteem Scale on Western
samples. Another limitation is that we were not able to compare
our current measure of relational self-esteem to other current measures of relational self-esteem (e.g., Harter et al., 1998) in the current paper. However, this work is an initial exploratory study.
Future studies could simultaneously test different measures of
relational self-esteem and compare them to each other.
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the paper.

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Received 18 August 2011, accepted 6 February 2012

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