Why We’re Wrong About Self-Esteem
Have you ever wondered what someone means when they refer to ‘healthy self-esteem?’ Does that mean that someone is fearless or confident? To begin our discussion on self-esteem, we must first agree on a definition.
“Self-esteem” can be defined as the value a person places on him or herself. If we say that someone has good self-esteem, we’re basically saying that she sees herself as valuable. In contrast, if a person suffers from low self-esteem, she doesn’t place much value on herself.
With that definition in mind, let’s continue our discussion by looking at the way in which self-esteem influences our lives. An interesting shift in this area has occurred in the past few years among those who study the effects of self-esteem. For the past twenty five years, many in psychology and education have believed that a child’s level of self-esteem strongly predicts his future success.
You may already know that, beginning in California in the early 1980s, educators had formed curriculae around the concept that children who develop good self-esteem tend to resist peer pressure more successfully. That, in turn, has been thought to be an effective way of reducing drug use, high school dropout rates and teen pregnancy.
The proponents of the self-esteem movement believe children’s self-esteem is most influenced by negative early childhood experiences such as abuse. Many states followed suit and made huge investments in bolstering the self-esteem of school children through education programs, so that they would become responsible adults.
But recent studies don’t support that notion. They actually found little evidence that people who registered high on the self-esteem scale are any more likely to resist peer pressure or to achieve success.
In fact, a large study by Brown University which was published in 2003 suggests that self-esteem follows success. What they found was that a marked increase in self-esteem occurred consistently when their subjects were able to accomplish their goals.
The second surprise, from that study, and others since, is that the most important factor in self-esteem seems to be the set of social values in which the person believes. To untangle that statement, let’s define social values as the agreed-upon valuable concepts in a society.
Depending on the location, these might include freedom, brotherhood, family, knowledge, and all the other basic concepts upon which that society is formed. And so, the study at Brown points toward someone assigning value to himself based on how well he succeeds in what his society says is valuable.
So now, we’ve arrived back to our original question: what exactly, then, is self-esteem? Based on what we’ve discussed, our definition can now be: the value a person places on themselves in the context of their larger society and its values. It remains to be seen how that new definition will change the way healthy self-esteem is encouraged in children.
