According to a new international study, self-esteem increases as people grow older, and men tend to have higher levels of self-esteem than women. The findings were based on data collected from more than 985,000 people from 48 countries between 1999 and 2009. Lead author Dr. Wiebke Bleidorn writes, “This remarkable degree of similarity implies that gender and age differences in self-esteem are partly driven by universal mechanisms; these can either be universal biological mechanisms such as hormonal influences or universal cultural mechanisms such as universal gender roles. However, universal influences do not tell the whole story.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, January 2016