Self-esteem

What is self-esteem?

Self-esteem is what you think about yourself, it is the value that you assign to yourself.

High self-esteem means giving high value to ourselves. Low self-esteem means giving low value to ourselves.

Self-esteem is a belief and therefore it may not reflect reality.

Self-esteem can be seen as the difference between our ideal self, that is what we want to be, and our perceived self, that is how close we think we are near to our ideal self.

The ideal self is based on the needs we impose to ourselves. While the perceived self is based on the capacities to satisfy those needs we believe we have.

What self-esteem depends on?

Self-esteem highly depends on the experiences we live in our life and on ones core beliefs.

For example if we live experiences where we are strongly criticised, then our self-esteem may decrease.

If we live experiences where we are respected and recognised for our accomplishments, then our self-esteem may increase.

I think that self-esteem also depends on how difficult a person defines their own life goals and standards.

If a person defines too difficult life goals and fails to achieve them, then self-esteem may decrease.

Therefore I think that consistently setting slightly challenging life goals may help prevent low self-esteem and encourage continuous personal growth.

What is the purpose of self-esteem?

There are various theories that tried to respond to this question:

• Terror Management theory:
  • self-esteem gives us security, because if we believe we are valued participant in a culture, we are less terrorised by our main fear that is the death.
• Sociometer theory:
  • self-esteem is needed to have a subjective indicator of how other people would evaluate ourselves.
• Identity control theory:
  • Self-esteem is a way to evaluate the difference between the actual self and the ideal self.

Why is self-esteem important?

Self-esteem has been correlated with various important aspects in life like happiness and anxiety.

In particular high self-esteem is related with high happiness. Low self-esteem is related with depression and anxiety.

It is difficult to define correlation and causation of self-esteem because it is a complex factor. Self-esteem increases persistence after failures.

Therefore self-esteem may condition the actions that a person do and therefore may change the objective reality.

However other researches suggest that self-compassion is more important in order to live a happier life.

Can self-esteem be increased? If yes, how?

Yes, self-esteem can be increased. I have not found strong evidence based strategies that improve self-esteem. However some people and researches suggest that the following strategies increase self-esteem:

• be assertive that means expressing your thoughts, feelings and needs clearly and confidently while respecting others.
• develop mastery that means be competent in a particular subject or activity.
• develop autonomy that means feeling in control of your life and feeling free to act in a way that aligns with your desires.
• develop positive relations with other people that:
  • are not very critical with you
  • praise you as a reward for socially desirable behaviour and self-improvement.
• develop self-compassion. Self-compassion is positively correlated with self-esteem, but there are no evidence about the causation.
• develop self-acceptance that means:
  • being aware of one’s strengths and weaknesses.
  • do not criticise too much yourself if you had thoughts, felt or did something wrong.
  • accepting one’s self flaws.
• be coherent that means do not have contradictions between thoughts, words and actions.
• develop self affirmation.

Can one have too much self-esteem?

Yes, having too much self-esteem can leads to:

• narcissism that means exclusively focus oneself without considering others.
• develop prejudices and discriminations.

For these reasons, it is better to develop self-compassion than self-esteem.

Can self-esteem be measured?

One of the most used scale to measure self-esteem is the Rosenberg self-esteem scale.

My current Conclusions about Self-esteem

• Self-esteem is personal because it depends on what you think about yourself. However self-esteem can be influenced by other people.
• We should weight the importance of self-esteem because it is conditioned by what other people think of us. Therefore it may not reflect reality. Therefore giving to much importance to self-esteem can be counterproductive.
• A purpose of self-esteem should be to motivate us to act in order to reduce the gap between ideal self and perceived self. However, it often does not work in this way and it leads us to do not act because we may fail and we are afraid of what other people may think.
• I think there may be a correlation between self-esteem and mindset. Who have a growth mindset, likely have higher self-esteem than who have a fixed mindset.
• Considering that:
  • Self-esteem can be counterproductive and may lead us to do not act.
  • People with low self-esteem and growth mindset, likely are more motivated to act.
  • People with low self-esteem and fixed mindset, likely are not motivated to act because of the fixed mindset.
  • People with high self-esteem and fixed mindset, likely are not motivated to act because in case of failure, their self-esteem will be negatively impacted.
  • People with high self-esteem and growth mindset, likely are more motivated to act because also in case of failure, their self-esteem will not be impacted because they believe that they can improve and that their value is not fixed. Therefore I think having a growth or fixed mindset influences more motivation than self-esteem.
• It seems better to focus on self-compassion and self-affirmation than self-esteem considering that they have similar benefits of self-esteem and less drawbacks.
• Considering that self-esteem may depends on the importance one assigns to the experiences they have lived, I think self-esteem may depends on the personality traits.
• I believe that one should continuously improve himself, developing competences that can be useful for oneself and others, while maintaining the belief that they are a valuable person even if in the face of failures.

References

• Does high self-esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles? | Roy F. Baumeister, Jennifer D. Campbell, Joachim I. Krueger, Kathleen D. Vohs | 2003
• The Development of Self-Esteem | Ulrich Orth, Richard W Robins | 2014
• Measuring Global Self Esteem Construct Validation of a Single Item Measure and the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale | Richard W Robins, Holly M Hendin, Kali H Trzesniewski | 2001
• The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: A terror management theory | J Greenberg, T Pyszczynski, S Solomon | 1986
• Why Do People Need Self-Esteem? A Theoretical and Empirical Review | T Pyszczynski, J Greenberg, S Solomon, J Arndt, J Schimel | 2004
• A Theory of Self-Esteem | AD Cast, PJ Burke | 2002
• The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory | MR Leary, RF Baumeister | 2000