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Peter B. Zeldow, PhD
Northwestern University Medical School Chicago, Ill

David C. Clark, PhD
Rush Medical College Chicago, Ill

JAMA. 1989;261(14):2066.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.—

We agree with Merrill and colleagues that personality factors are major determinants of a variety of personal and professional outcomes among medical students and physicians. However, our own findings indicate a more complex state of affairs than the model that they present. There is indeed a cluster of personality attributes, including self-esteem, locus of control, and self-confidence, which predicts subjective well-being in medical students both concurrently and up to 2 years later.^1,2 In our research, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale is not the best measure to represent this cluster. Medical students are uniformly high in self-esteem compared with population norms, and 4 years of medical school do little to alter scores on this measure. We have elsewhere observed that those highest in self-esteem could probably profit from a touch of self-doubt or humility.¹ In other words, an absence of depressive symptoms during medical school does not necessarily . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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