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This is the age your self-esteem is at its highest

Confidence come at us. - by Lucy B
  • 13 Sep 2018
This is the age your self-esteem is at its highest

It’s totally natural for our self-esteem to ebb and flow. Some days you roll outta bed feeling like Beyoncé and other days you’re all:

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And while no one is immune to this internal tug-of-war, new research published in the journal Psychological Bulletin shows that self-assurance (much like a fine wine) does, in fact, get better with time. 

Researchers looked at data from a total of 164, 868 participants across 331 different studies and found that people’s confidence grew steadily (with a brief pause during the teen years) until the age of 60. They then tended to spend the next decade riding the self-love high. 

“Midlife is, for many adults a time of highly stable life circumstances in domains such as relationships and work,” Ulrich Orth, the study’s co-author and a professor of psychology at the University of Bern told TIME. 

“Moreover, during middle adulthood most individuals further invest in the social roles they hold, which might promote their self-esteem. For example, people take on managerial roles at work, maintain a satisfying relationship with their spouse or partner, and help their children to become responsible and independent adults.”

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And as for 70 onwards? Things start to decline slightly. 

“Old age frequently involves loss of social roles as a result of retirement, the empty next, and, possibly, widowhood, all of which are factors that may threaten self-esteem,” Orth explained. “In addition, ageing often leads to negative changes in other possible sources of self-esteem, such as socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities and health.”

The good news? These factors don’t take much of a toll on our mental state until we reach 90.

“Many people are able to maintain a relatively high level of self-esteem even during old age,” Orth said.

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This article was originally published on Women's Health

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