Psychological Mechanism of Self-Esteem from the Evolutionary Psychology Perspective

Self-esteem,an adaptive mechanism to solving the problems of survival and development throughout human evolutionary history,is a collection of internal representations,monitoring mechanisms,updating mechanisms,evaluative mechanisms,motivational mechanisms and mechanisms designed to generate behavioral output,and its adaptive functions mainly embodied in the problems faced by humans,such as social status and mating.Though related researches involve its origin,composition and adaptive function currently on self-esteem,yet few did empirical studies to make it a systematic theory.Therefore,in order to form a systematic evolutionary theory of self-esteem,empirical researches should be strengthened from the perspective of evolutionary psychology.