Self esteem and task performance { Evidence from educational outcomes.

Positive assessments of the self such as high self esteem, self ecacy or 'can do' attitudes are often portrayed as valuable assets. The standard nding in the recent empirical economics literature on personality traits is that higher levels of self es- teem are associated with favorable outcomes. Using data on adolescent self esteem and high school grade point averages we replicate this result and nd a positive link between positive self evaluations and higher levels of educational performance. However, when we exploit exogenous variation in self esteem due to skin problems to account for the endogeneity of self esteem, this nding is reversed. We discuss mechanisms that may generate such an adverse causal eect of positive self evalua- tions.