Low self-esteem prospectively predicts depression in the transition to young adulthood: A replication of Orth, Robins, and Roberts (2008)

The present study is a close replication of the work of Orth, Robins, and Roberts (2008). Orth et al. (2008) tested three theoretical models of the relation between self-esteem and depression--the vulnerability model, the scar model, and the common factor model--using longitudinal, cross-lagged panel designs. The authors concluded that depression and self-esteem were not the same construct (contrary to the common-factor model), and furthermore, the results were clearly in line with the vulnerability model and not with the scar model (low self-esteem predicts subsequent levels of depression and not vice versa). In addition, the results held for both men and women. To conduct a very close replication of the work of Orth et al. (2008), we used data from another large longitudinal study (N = 2,512), which is highly similar in study design and that contains the same measures (self-esteem and depression). The present study replicated the results of the Orth et al. (2008) study in a notable manner, in regard to the comparability of the coefficients, and therefore, corroborates the vulnerability model (and not the scar- or the common-factor model).