Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs (for example, "I am competent", "I am worthy") and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the positive or negative evaluation of the self, is how we feel about it'.[1] A person’s self-concept consists of the beliefs one has about oneself, one’s self perception, or, as Hamlyn (1983: 241) expresses it, “the picture of oneself”. Baumeister (1997) described Self concept as totally perception which people hold about him/ herself (p. 681). It is not the “facts” about one-self but rather what one believes to be true about one-self (Sarah Mercer, p. 14). Early researchers used self-concept as a descriptive construct, such as ‘I am an athlete’ (Rosenberg 1979).
However, recent theories adapted self esteem with more evaluative statements like ‘I am good at tennis’ (Harter 1996). The latter statement not only describes the self, as the individual identifies himself or herself, but evaluates the self by putting worthiness on it. Therefore, self-esteem is defined as both descriptive and evaluative self-related statements. As a social psychological construct, self-esteem is attractive because researchers have conceptualized it as an influential predictor of relevant outcomes, such as academic achievement (Marsh 1990) or exercise behavior (Hagger et al. 1998). In addition, self-esteem has also been treated as an important outcome due to its close relation with psychological well-being (Marsh 1989). Self-concept is widely believed to be composed of more than just perceived competence, and this leads to the relative degree of evaluative and cognitive beliefs of the construct.
Self-esteem is viewed as the most evaluative and affective of the three constructs (Harter, 1999a). Overlay, self-concept is considered as the beliefs about perceived competence and self-evaluative in a specific domain.Self-esteem can apply specifically to a particular dimension (for example, "I believe I am a good writer and I feel happy about that") or have global extent (for example, "I believe I am a bad person, and feel bad about myself in general"). Psychologists usually regard self-esteem as an enduring personality characteristic ("trait" self-esteem), though normal, short-term variations ("state" self-esteem) also exist.
Synonyms or near-synonyms of self-esteem include: self-worth,[2] self-regard,[3] self-respect,[4][5] and self-integrity. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, "self-love" is "the instinct or desire to promote one's well-being";[6] while La Rochefoucauld considered 'that amour-propre (self-regard) is the mainspring of all human activities'.[7]
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The original normal definition presents self-esteem as a ratio found by dividing one’s successes in areas of life of importance to a given individual by the failures in them or one’s “success / pretensions”.[8] Problems with this approach come from making self-esteem contingent upon success: this implies inherent instability because failure can occur at any moment.[9] In the mid 1960s, Morris Rosenberg and social-learning theorists defined self-esteem in terms of a stable sense of personal worth or worthiness.[10] Nathaniel Branden in 1969 defined self-esteem as "...the experience of being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and being worthy of happiness". According to Branden, self-esteem is the sum of self-confidence (a feeling of personal capacity) and self-respect (a feeling of personal worth). It exists as a consequence of the implicit judgement that every person does about, on one side, his/her ability to face life's challenges, that is, to understand and solve problems, and, on the other side, his right to achieve happiness, or, in other words, to respect and defend his own interests and needs.[11] This two-factor approach, as some have also called it, provides a balanced definition that seems to be capable of dealing with limits of defining self-esteem primarily in terms of competence or worth alone.[12]
Implicit self-esteem refers to a person's disposition to evaluate themselves positively or negatively in a spontaneous, automatic, or unconscious manner. It contrasts with explicit self-esteem, which entails more conscious and reflective self-evaluation. Both explicit self-esteem and implicit self-esteem are subtypes of self-esteem proper. Implicit self-esteem is assessed using indirect measures of cognitive processing, including the Name Letter Task[13] Such indirect measures are designed to reduce awareness of, or control of, the process of assessment. When used to assess implicit self-esteem, they feature stimuli designed to represent the self, such as personal pronouns (e.g., "I") or characters in one's name.
For the purposes of empirical research, psychologists typically assess self-esteem by a self-report inventory yielding a quantitative result. They establish the validity and reliability of the questionnaire prior to its use.
Self-esteem is typically measured as a continuous scale. The Rosenberg (1965) 10-item scores each item on a four-point response system that requires participants to indicate their level of agreement with a series of statements about themselves. The Coopersmith Inventory uses a 50-question battery over a variety of topics and asks subjects whether they rate someone as similar or dissimilar to themselves. [14]
People with a healthy level of self-esteem:[15]
Abraham Maslow states that psychological health is not possible unless the essential core of the person is fundamentally accepted, loved and respected by others and by her or his self. Self-esteem allows people to face life with more confidence, benevolence and optimism, and thus easily reach their goals and self-actualize.[11] It allows oneself to be more ambitious, but not with respect to possessions or success, but with respect to what one can experience emotionally, creatively and spiritually. To develop self-esteem is to widen the capacity to be happy; self-esteem allows people to be convinced they deserve happiness.[11] Understanding this is fundamental, and universally beneficial, since the development of positive self-esteem increases the capacity to treat other people with respect, benevolence and goodwill, thus favoring rich interpersonal relationships and avoiding destructive ones.[11] For Erich Fromm, love of others and love of ourselves are not alternatives. On the contrary, an attitude of love toward themselves will be found in all those who are capable of loving others.
Self-esteem allows creativity at the workplace, and is a specially critical condition for teaching professions.[17]
José-Vicente Bonet reminds us that the importance of self-esteem is obvious when one realizes that the opposite of it is not the esteem of others, but self-rejection, a characteristic of that state of great unhappiness that we call “depression”.[16] As Freud put it, the depressive has suffered 'an extraordinary diminution in his self-regard, an impoverishment of his ego on a grand scale....He has lost his self-respect'.[18]
The Yogyakarta Principles, a document on international human rights law addresses the discriminatory attitude toward LGBT peoples that makes their self-esteem low to be subject to human rights violation including human trafficking.[19] and World Health Organization recommends in "Preventing Suicide" published in 2000 that strengthening students' self-esteem is important to protect children and adolescents against mental distress and despondency, enabling them to cope adequately with difficult and stressful life situations.[20]
A person with low self-esteem may show some of the following symptoms:[21]
As well, individuals with low self-esteem may have feelings of insignificance.
Many early theories suggested that self-esteem is a basic human need or motivation. American psychologist Abraham Maslow, for example, included self-esteem in his hierarchy of needs. He described two different forms of esteem: the need for respect from others and the need for self-respect, or inner self-esteem.[22] Respect from others entails recognition, acceptance, status, and appreciation, and was believed to be more fragile and easily lost than inner self-esteem. According to Maslow, without the fulfillment of the self-esteem need, individuals will be driven to seek it and unable to grow and obtain self-actualization.
Modern theories of self-esteem explore the reasons humans are motivated to maintain a high regard for themselves. Sociometer theory maintains that self-esteem evolved to check one's level of status and acceptance in ones' social group. According to terror management theory, self-esteem serves a protective function and reduces anxiety about life and death.[23]
Self-esteem is the sum of attitudes which depend on perceptions, thoughts, evaluations, feelings and behavioral tendencies aimed toward ourselves, the way we are and behave, and our body's and character's features. In short, it's oneself's evaluative perception.[16]
The importance of self-esteem lies in the fact that it concerns to ourselves, the way we are and the sense of our personal value. Thus, it affects the way we are and act in the world and the way we are related to everybody else. Nothing in the way we think, feel, decide and act escapes the influence of self-esteem.[16]
Abraham Maslow, in his hierarchy of human needs, describes the need for esteem, which is divided into two aspects, the esteem for oneself (self-love, self-confidence, skill, aptitude, etc.), and respect and esteem one receives from other people (recognition, success, etc.) The healthiest expression of self-esteem, according to Maslow, “is the one which manifests in respect we deserve for others, more than renown, fame and flattery”.
Carl Rogers, the greatest exponent of humanistic psychology, exposed that the origin of problems for many people is that they despise themselves and they consider themselves to be unvaluable and unworthy of being loved; thus the importance he gave to unconditional acceptance of client.[16] Indeed, the concept of self-esteem is approached since then in humanistic psychology as an inalienable right for every person, summarized in the following sentence:
| “ | Every human being, with no exception, for the mere fact to be it, is worthy of unconditional respect of everybody else; he deserves to esteem himself and to be esteemed.[16] | ” |
By virtue of this reason, even the most evil human beings deserve respect and considered treatment. This attitude, nonetheless, does not pretend to come into conflict with mechanisms that society has at its disposition to prevent individuals from causing hurt —of any type— to others.[16]
The concept of self-esteem has frequently gone beyond the exclusively scientific sphere to take part in popular language.
From the late 1970s to the early 1990s many Americans assumed as a matter of course that students' self-esteem acted as a critical factor in the grades that they earn in school, in their relationships with their peers, and in their later success in life. Under this assumption, some American groups created programs which aimed to increase the self-esteem of students. Until the 1990s little peer-reviewed and controlled research took place on this topic.
Peer-reviewed research undertaken since then has not validated previous assumptions. Recent research indicates that inflating students' self-esteem in and of itself has no positive effect on grades. One study has shown that inflating self-esteem by itself can actually decrease grades.[24] The relationship involving self-esteem and academic results does not signify that high self-esteem contributes to high academic results. It simply means that high self-esteem may be accomplished due to high academic performance due to the other variables of social interactions and life events affecting this performance.[25]
"Attempts by pro-esteem advocates to encourage self-pride in students solely by reason of their uniqueness as human beings will fail if feelings of well-being are not accompanied by well-doing. It is only when students engage in personally meaningful endeavors for which they can be justifiably proud that self-confidence grows, and it is this growing self-assurance that in turn triggers further achievement."[26]
The pro-esteem position was caricatured in 1992 in Calvin and Hobbes, with Calvin claiming that 'Homework is bad for my self-esteem. It sends the message that I don't know enough!....So instead of trying to learn, I'm just concentrating on liking myself the way I am'.[27]
High self-esteem correlates highly with self-reported happiness. Considering the high correlation of the data in the study (a .47 correlation in a study of over 13,000 college students from different schools and countries), causation cannot be proved.[25] Additionally, self-esteem has been found to be related to forgiveness in close relationships, in that people with high self-esteem will be more forgiving than people with low self-esteem.[28]
Parental habits, whether positive or negative, can influence the development of those same habits of self-perception in their children.[29] Children are also likely to remember parental responses accordingly to their current emotional state at those certain times. For example, when the child receives positive reinforcement or praise when he or she currently has a high self esteem, or receives criticisms in a low self esteem state, it is effectively embedded in their memories.[30]
The American psychologist Albert Ellis criticized on numerous occasions the concept of self-esteem as essentially self-defeating and ultimately destructive.[31] Although acknowledging the human propensity and tendency to ego rating as innate, he has critiqued the philosophy of self-esteem as unrealistic, illogical and self- and socially destructive – often doing more harm than good. Questioning the foundations and usefulness of generalized ego strength, he has claimed that self-esteem is based on arbitrary definitional premises, and over-generalized, perfectionistic and grandiose thinking.[31] Acknowledging that rating and valuing behaviours and characteristics is functional and even necessary, he sees rating and valuing human beings' totality and total selves as irrational and unethical. The healthier alternative to self-esteem according to him is unconditional self-acceptance and unconditional other-acceptance.[32] Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is a psychotherapy based on this approach.[33]
For a person with low self-esteem —or “wrong”, according to Branden's terminology— any positive stimulus or incentive will make him feel comfortable, or, at most, better with respect to himself/herself for just some time. Therefore, properties, sex, success, or physical appearance, by themselves, will produce comfort, or a false and ephemeral development of self-esteem, but they won't really strengthen confidence and respect to oneself.[11]
Neville Symington described such 'transitory comforts...as like short-term memory': any such input 'keeps me going for a couple of days, but then I need another pick-me-up dose'.[34]
Branden has claimed that “self-esteem can be better understood as a sort of spiritual achievement, that is, a victory in psyche's evolution”.[11]
More recent studies demonstrate both a correlation between self-esteem and life satisfaction, and that such levels of correlation are to an extent culturally relative.[35]
A common mistake is to think that loving oneself is necessarily equivalent to narcissism, as opposed for example to what Erik Erikson speaks of as 'a post-narcissistic love of the ego'.[36] A person with a healthy self-esteem accepts and loves himself/herself unconditionally, acknowledging both virtues and faults in the self, and yet, in spite of everything, being able to continue to live loving her/himself.
In narcissists, by contrast, an 'innate uncertainty about their own worth gives rise to...a self-protective, but often totally spurious, aura of grandiosity'[37] - producing the class 'of narcissists, or people with very high, but insecure, self-esteem...fluctuating with each new episode of social praise or rejection'.[38] Narcissism can thus be seen as a symptom of fundamentally low self-esteem (that is, lack of love towards oneself), but often accompanied by 'an immense increase in self-esteem' based on 'the defense mechanism of denial by overcompensation'.[39]
The narcissist, then, is not able to acknowledge and accept his faults, which he always tries to hide: his 'idealized love of self...rejected the part of him' which he denigrates - 'this destructive little child'[40] within. Instead, the narcissist emphasizes his virtues in the presence of others, just to try to convince himself that he is a valuable person and to try to stop feeling ashamed for his faults;[16] unfortunately such 'people with unrealistically inflated self-views, which may be especially unstable and highly vulnerable to negative information...tend to have poor social skills'.[41]
In Buddhism, Māna—overly high self-esteem or conceit— is one of the bonds of which an anagami is not yet free. It is one of the blockages of paths towards nirvana.[42]
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