The study of children's and adolescents' self-esteem is indebted to the pioneering social psychologist to whom this book is dedicated, Morris Rosenberg. Perhaps no one contributed more to our understanding of the dynamics, correlates, and consequences of children's self-concept. Rosenberg elucidated the mechanisms by which the evaluations of some referent others are more important than others in shaping self-concept, clarified the social contexts in which social comparisons operate, and demonstrated that self-concept is characterized by a complex hierarchical structure of traits, values, and identities, the psychological ordering and salience of which varies from one individual to the next. In this chapter, I briefly review and assess Rosenberg's lasting theoretical contributions to the field, summarize what we know and what we don't know about how children see themselves, and suggest important directions for extending and refining the study of children's self-concept.

Arguably, Rosenberg's most important contributions were theoretical, extending in valuable ways the seminal work of Charles Horton Cooley (1902) and George Herbert Mead (1934) and demonstrating that significant others are not equally significant in their impact on self-concept. Throughout a career spanning three decades of research on the structure and correlates of self-concept, Rosenberg carefully and systematically used theory to guide and explain the proximate social processes bearing on an individual's feelings and attitudes toward oneself. In conceptualizing, designing, and interpreting his research, he skillfully and rigorously applied, tested, and refined four theories of self-formation: reflected appraisals, social comparisons, self-perception, and psychological centrality.