Self‐esteem Among Ethnic Minorities and Three Principles of Self‐esteem Formation: Turkish Children in The Netherlands

This study explores the importance of reflected appraisal, social comparison and self‐attribution as sources of “academic” self‐esteem among ethnic minority children. Turkish children in The Netherlands scored significantly lower on a standardized test of Dutch language command but did not have lower academic self‐esteem in comparison with Dutch classmates. Self‐attributed performance was the only important source of self‐esteem among the Dutch. It was also an important source among the Turkish children in addition, however, to the perceived appraisal of Dutch classmates. These results indicate that to understand the level of self‐esteem among different groups it seems necessary to concentrate on the processes of self‐esteem formation and the way they operate in these groups. It is suggested that minority position and culture can affect the importance attached to different sources of self‐esteem.