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DELHI PSYCHIATRY JOURNAL Vol. 18 No. 1

Original Article

A Study of Personality and Self Esteem among

youth of Rohtak, Haryana
Sushma1, Pradeep Kumar2, Promila Batra3
Psychology Department, Maharishi Dyanand University
2
Department of Psychiatric Social Work, State Institute of Mental Health, Rohtak, Haryana, India.
Contact: Sushma, E-mail:sushmaratheecp@gmail.com
1,3

ABSTRACT
Background: Personality is a dynamic which is not easily defined but it is definitely
influences our life and had a significant correlation with low and high self-esteem. Aim:
The present study examined the comparison and correlation between the personality and
self-esteem among youth of Rohtak, Haryana. Method: The present study was conducted
on 80 youth from Maharishi Dyanand University Rohtak, Haryana. It was a cross-sectional
study in which included both genders. McCrare & Costas Big five personality factor
scale was used to assess personality types and Virk and Chauhans self-esteem scale was
used to assess self-esteem of the youth. The data obtained for the variables under study
have been subjected to different statistical analysis such as mean, standard deviation
(SD),t-test, & Pearson correlation to understand the impact and relationship between the
variables. Results & Conclusion: Pearson correlation of self-esteem on the personality
traits sub-scales revealed that the extroversion versus introversion & closeness to experience
type were significant positive predictors and neuroticism versus emotion stability was
significant negative predictor of the self-esteem.
Key words: Self-esteem, Personality, Big five factor.
Introduction
Youth is defined as any member of society
between the ages of 15-34 years. The report titled
The power of 1.8 billion, said 28 per cent of Indias
population is 10 to 24 year-olds, adding that the youth
population is growing fastest in the poorest nations.
Global number of youths is highest ever.1
In Columbia Encyclopedia 6th ed. define
personality as Personality refer to behavior which
though not necessarily right or wrong, is pleasing
or offensive to other people favorable or unfavorable
to the individuals standing with his/her fellows.
Personality can be broadly defined as the total quality
of his/her attitudes and interests in his/her manner
of acting and his/her personal philosophy of life.2
In the first decade of the 21st century, the Five-

Factor Model or Big Five has been the most widely

researched structural model of personality was
developed. 3 McCrae and Costa 4 explain that in
personality research the broad traits such as,
Extroversion, Neuroticism, Openness, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness represent the most
general dimensions of individual differences in
personality. Neuroticism (N) refers to the degree
to which a person responds to stress; Extroversion
(E) refers to the degree to which a person can
tolerate sensory stimulation from people and
situations; Openness (O) refers to the degree to
which we ar e open to new experiences;
Agreeableness (A) refers to the degree which we
relate to others with tolerance and acceptance; and
finally, Conscientiousness (C) refers to the degree

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to which one works towards goals in an industrious,

disciplined, and dependable fashion. Self-esteem is
how we value ourselves; it is how we perceive our
value to the world and how valuable we think we
are to others. Positive self-esteem gives us the
strength and flexibility to take charge of our lives
and grow from our mistakes without the fear of
rejection. It is difficult to get consensus on a definition
of self-esteem but it can be defined stated that selfesteem is the evaluation which the individual makes
and customarily maintains with regard to himself/
herself. 5 Further, Self-esteem refers to peoples
representations of their typical, or general, global
feelings of self-worth and self-esteem level reflects
peoples representations of how they typically feel
about themselves across time and context. 6
Generally, self-esteem is described as a personal
evaluation that an individual makes of her or himself,
their sense of their own worth, value, importance,
or capabilities7.Individuals with high self-esteem
appear confident and are less influenced by others
than individuals with low self-esteem. Low selfesteem is significantly related to depression, suicide
ideation, delinquency, aggression and antisocial
behavior. It is also seen that family affluence,
personality dimension of extroversion, emotional
stability and openness to experience, as well as
mental health and social support from family are
also associated with self-esteem.8 A study conducted
by Ehrenberg and Juckes, 9 showed that more
disagreeable individuals spent increased time on
calls, whereas extroverted and neurotic individuals
reported increased time spent text messaging. More
disagreeable individuals and those with lower selfesteem spent increased time using instant messaging
(IM). For addictive tendencies related to communication technologies, more neurotic individuals
reported stronger mobile phone addictive tendencies;
while more disagreeable individuals and those with
lower self-esteem reported stronger IM addictive
tendencies. 9 The goal of present study was to
investigate effect of personality traits on self-esteem.
The main purpose of the present study was to assess
which one of the personality traits predicts the selfesteem.
Aims and Objectives
The objectives of the present study were to
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esteem among young adults and compare them on

personality dimension and self-esteem.
Material and Methods
Participants
A group of 80 participants was recruited from
Maharshi Dayanand University Rohtak, in which
40 were males and 40 were females with using
snowball sampling technique. Those participants
who have age range between 20-35 years and
education at least 12th included and those having
any chronic psychiatric disorder and medical illness
were excluded from the study.
Measures
A specially designed Performa for collecting
information about socio-demographic and clinical
variables for the present study was used. To
measure the self-esteem of the participants, Self
Esteem Inventory was used10. It consists of 20 items
in which some are positive (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16,
18 & 20) and some are negative (3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13,
15, 17 & 19). Each statement consists of two
alternate such as yes or no. In scoring procedure
score were allotted to each answer with the help of
scoring key in the manual. To measure the
personality of participants, NEO-Personality
Inventory11 was used. NEO- FFI derived from NEOPI developed by Costa and Mc Care11 was used in
the present 5 domains of personality (Neuroticism,
Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness and
Consentaneous). Each domain consists of 12 items
and item has to be responding in 5 point scale. The
value of correlation of NEO-PI was found to 0.92,
0.90, 0.91, 0.77 and 0.87 for each domain
respectively.
Procedure: Those fulfilling exclusion and
inclusion criteria, were recruited for the present
study. A special Performa designed for sociodemographic and clinical variables was filled up for
all the participants. Written inform consent was
taken from all the participants. Subsequently Self
Esteem Inventory and NEO-Personality Inventory
were administered to assess the self-esteem and
personality. The study period was Jan 2012 to April
2012.
Statistical Analysis: Statically Package for
social science16.0was used to analyze the data. The
continuous variables have been expressed by mean,

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DELHI PSYCHIATRY JOURNAL Vol. 18 No. 1

and standard deviation. Both group have been

compared by independent sample t test in which
equal variance was assumed and Pearsons
correlations. Statistical value considered as
significant if than p value was less or equal to 0.05.
Results
Tables 1 depicted general characteristics of the
participants such as sample size, gender, age- range,
occupation and education, marital status and religion.
In the present study, sample was equally distributed.
Most of the students were unmarried and all
belonged to Hindu religion and age range was 2035 years. In other courses the participants included
were those doing professional courses such as-

BBA, B. Tec., LLB etc.

Table 2 found the correlation coefficient of selfesteem and personality various domains. A
significant positive correlation was found between
self-esteem and openness versus closeness to
experience traits (this value considered as significant
because it is around .40) , whereas there was a
negative correlations between neuroticism versus
emotion stability in males. There was also a positive
correlation between self-esteem and extroversion
versus introversion traits and a negative correlations
between neuroticism versus emotion stability in
females.
Table 3 shows that t-value of self-esteem and
personality among males and females. The results

Table 1. Socio-demographic profile of participants

Sample size

Gender
composition

Age range

Occupation and
education

Marital Status

Religion

80

Male = 40
Females = 40

20-35 years
Male (22.78 8.16)
Female (19.13 10.69)

Students
M.A.- Ph. D
Male =24 (60%, MA),
8 (20% Other course)
2 (5%, Ph. D Scholar)
6 (15%, M. Phil)
Female=14 (35%, MA),
22 (55% Other course)
4 (10%, Ph. D Scholar)

Unmarried
= 72 (70%)
Married
= 8 (30%)

Hindu

Table 2. The correlation coefficient of Personality and Self-esteem among females and males
Variable

Neuroticism

Extroversion

Openness to
experience

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness

Self-esteem
(Females)
Self-esteem
(Males)

-0.064

0.502*

0.263

0.306

0.080

0.115

0.257

0.393*

-0.019

0.157

Value equal .40 or more than considered as significant.

* Significant at 0.05 level

** Significant at 0.01 level

Table 3. Comparison of mean scores of male and female subjects on Personality dimension
and Self-esteem among young adults
Variable

Males (M SD)

Females (M SD)

t-Test

P<

Neuroticism versus emotion stability

Extroversion versus introversion
Openness versus closeness to experience
Agreeableness versus antagonism
Consentaneous versus lack of direction
Self-esteem

26.9 5.79
28.575 5.53
22.8 4.95
22.8 6.307
28.15 6.432
130.85 2.037

22.82 6.138
26.6 6.54
24.67 6.06
25.97 5.37
28.425 6.66
131.075 22.08

3.053
1.457
1.515
1.069
0.188
0.047

0.001
N.S
N.S
N.S
N.S
N.S

Value expressed as Mean1SD

p-value at 0.01 level is 2.71 & at 0.05 level is 2.02. All higher score than constant value considered as significant12.
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showed that the mean score of males was

significantly greater than females in the extroversion
versus introversion, neuroticism versus emotion
stability, agreeableness versus antagonism. But
mean score of the female was significantly greater
than the male in the openness versus closeness to
experience and agreeableness versus antagonism
trait. Although, there wasnt significant difference
between females and males in extroversion versus
introversion, agreeableness versus antagonism,
conscientiousness versus lack of direction, openness
versus closeness to experience traits and selfesteem.
Discussion
In the present study results showed significant
positive correlation between personality domains and
self-esteem which signifies the positive relationship
between personality and self-esteem. A research
has convincingly demonstrated that self-esteem is
strongly rooted in basic dimensions of personality,
such as the Big Five. 13 Self-esteem has been
found to be positively correlated with each of the
Big Five factors. Empirical associations between
neuroticism, extroversion and explicit self-esteem
are quite robust: self-esteem correlates negatively
with neuroticism and positively with extroversion,
agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness.
In the present study, results indicate that positive
correlation between self-esteem and openness
versus closeness to experience traits and negative
correlations between neuroticism versus emotion
stability in males. It has seen that positive correlation
between self-esteem and extroversion versus
introversion traits, and negative correlations between
neuroticism versus emotion stability in females.
Whereas in research it was found that global selfesteem has also positively corr elated with
extroversion and negatively with neuroticism14 .
Another study showed that extroversion versus
introversion, agreeableness versus antagonism,
conscientiousness versus lack of direction and
openness versus closeness to experience traits were
significant positive predictor and neuroticism versus
emotion stability was significant negative predictor
of the self-esteem15. This result has been support
to our study partially. Another study in which results
indicated that strong correlation was found between
subjects self-esteem and complexity and frequency
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of behavioral patterns detected. Positive correlation

was also found between subjects personality and
complexity and frequency of patterns. Certain
pattern types were found exclusively to be produced
by extroverts and other by introverts.16 A latest study
showed that, positive affect and social support,
significantly mediated the association between
extroversion and self-esteem. Furthermore, in both
the positive affect and social support path models,
the direct effects of extroversion on self-esteem
were small and non-significant. In contrast, for the
negative affect and optimism path models, the direct
effects of extroversion on self-esteem were
statistically significant. These findings highlight the
complex nature of the association between extroversion and self-esteem. 17 A study conducted by
Richard showed that high self-esteem individuals
were emotionally stable, extroverted, and
conscientious and were somewhat agreeable and
open to experience. Despite an extensive search
for potential mediators and moderators of this general
pattern, the relations between self-esteem and the
Big Five largely cut across age, sex, social class,
ethnicity, and nationality. High self-esteem individuals tended to ascribe socially desirable traits to
themselves. 18
When we compared self-esteem with
personality domains among males and females it was
found that they had significant difference in neuroticism versus emotion stability and slightly difference
between extroversion versus introversion, openness
versus closeness to experience, agreeableness
versus antagonism and self-esteem. In the results
males have higher score in extroversion versus
introversion whereas females have higher score in
openness ver sus closeness to experience,
agreeableness versus antagonism and self-esteem.
It has found that on average, people who have
low self-esteem are more neurotic and more
introverted (less extroverted) than people with high
self-esteem. It has also seen that people with low
self-esteem are less agreeable (more disagreeable),
less conscientious, and less open, on average,
compared to people with high self-esteem. The
strongest association between self-esteem and
personality is between low self-esteem and
neuroticism.19 A study conducted having personality
and self-esteem indicates that people who say they
are conscientious, agreeable, not neurotic, open new

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experiences, and extroverted have higher levels of

self-esteem. Conversely, those people who are
careless, disorganized, suspicious, self-pitying,
conforming and reserved generally have lower levels
of self-esteem. 20
Conclusions
The present study provides information about
personality traits and self-esteem among youth.
Results of the study reveal that extroversion versus
introversion and openness versus closeness to
experience traits was a significant positive predictor
and neuroticism versus emotion stability was a
significant negative predictor of the self-esteem.
Self-esteem definitely influences life in every
domain.
Limitation and Future directions
The sample size was small. All participants were
youth, educated and students. The socio-economic
status and other variables may be influence the
personality character. So it is difficult to generalize
the findings. But the study is meaningful and provides
a new idea for farther research in this domain. The
study will be also informative the professional and
policy maker those who have working having youth
population.
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