Rsearchers at the University of Florida, found that self-confidence can translate into earning hundreds of thousands of dollars more over a lifetime. Believing in yourself really does work wonders, especially for your bank account, the study found.
People with high opinions of themselves as teenagers and young adults drew bigger salaries in middle age than their less confident counterparts, and the gap was widest for those from privileged backgrounds.Timothy Judge, a UF management professor who did the study with graduate student Charlice Hurst, said that the findings proved that being self-confident kids does have its advantages.
“There are certainly significant advantages for children growing up with parents who are well-educated and work in professional occupations, but these advantages are especially profound when children are self-confident,” he said.
“Positive self-concept seems to act like an accelerant – the fuel to the fire – that leads the advantaged in our society to do better,” he added.
The study used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a nationally representative sample of 12,686 men and women who were between 14 and 22 years old when first interviewed in 1979. They were 37 to 45 in 2002, when the income findings were collected. Participants were interviewed annually until 1994 and then every two years after that, he said.
The study, which controlled for race and gender, evaluated mid-life income by examining parents’ education and occupational prestige, as well as participants’ educational levels, grade point averages, SAT scores and child poverty levels. For every category, the study found that having high self-esteem made a difference.
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The researches noted that for people who lacked self-confidence, whether they grew up poor made little difference in how much they earned as adults, roughly 7,000 dollars per year.
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Similarly, parents’ occupation made no difference in the earnings for those low in self-confidence. But for the self-assured, it made a much bigger difference, with those whose parents were professionals earning much more than self-confident people whose parents were laborers, and for that matter, more than those who lacked self-confidence.
“If your parents are doctors or lawyers, a positive self-concept matters a whole lot more than if your parents are roofers or employees in a fast-food restaurant,” Judge said.
Judge believes the effects of self-esteem and socio-economic background on income are particularly timely with today’s growing income disparity between the “haves” and “have nots.”
“As our economy becomes more high tech and places a higher premium on knowledge work, it gives tremendous opportunity to people who have advantages based on their upbringing,” he said.
“But people who don’t have advantages are much more limited in what they can make of themselves, probably because they have so little to capitalize on,” he added.
Although there are “rags to riches” stories, these are overshadowed by the large number of people who end up having to struggle to make a living.
At the same time, the study shows that early advantages by themselves are not enough to ensure the best shot at material well-being later in life.
“In light of popular beliefs that kids from middle- and upper-class families have it made, it is surprising to see what little positive impact socioeconomic status has in the absence of self-esteem,” Judge said.
“Research has shown that positive people who believe in themselves have more ambitious goals, so that even when they encounter adversity, they’re not as likely to internalize it,” he added.
The study will be published later this year in the Journal of Applied Psychology
Source-ANI
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