WEEK 9 - Self-esteem

• the higher it is, the more likely we are to treat others with respect

• Government of California (1986) → raising self-esteem would solve many of the state’s problems

What is self esteem?

William

• self esteem is defined as a certain average tone self feeling, independent of selfish reasons that we might have that each one of us carries.

• agreeing with self satisfaction, good qualities and having a positive view about oneself shows great self esteem

• feeling useless, good for nothing shows low self esteem

• self esteem = success/pretensions

• source of low self esteem include irrealistic goals and ideas about oneself

  Higgins

• Self discrepancies

  • actual self

  • ideal self

  • ought self

• domain specific self esteem

  • evaluating oneself i terms of things that they might value

  • different types of self esteem: musical, physical, etc.

• State self esteem: how you feel about yourself right now

• Trait self esteem: how you feel about yourself in general

• sometimes we are not fully aware of our self esteem

  • reaction time studies: how fast people associating negative/positive word to themselves

  • asking people how much they like letters (more self esteem = initials as greater self esteem)

• single item self esteem scale

  • how much self esteem do you think you have → simply asking people what they think about themselves

Benefits of self esteem

• lower self esteem in adolescence predict various outcomes later on in adulthood

  • poorer mental and physical health

  • more likely to be involved in criminal behaviour

  • more likely to have worse job prospects

• lower self esteem prospectively predicts depression (but not vice versa) → casual direction

• Strauman, Lemieux, Coe (1993)

  • anxious people had higher ideal selfs which after the priming it increased their anxiety→ higher cortisol levels, lower natural killer cell activity

• Greenberg et al (1992)

  • measured anxiety → self-report anxiety and skin conductance (physical arousal)

  • puts whose self esteem had been boosted, anxiety was significant reduced for the thresh conditions

• Terror management theory

  • humans uniquely aware of own mortality

  • anxiety buffer used to avoid paralysing terror

    • an individual’s personalised version of the cultural worldview

    • self esteem → attained by believing that one in living up tho the standards of value that are part of the cultural worldview

• Self esteem as a ‘sociometer’

  • belongingness → desire to form and maintain lasting, positive and significant interpersonal relationships

  • sociometer → motivativates the qualities of interpersonal relatinships; motivates behaviours that help the person to maintain a minimum level of acceptance by other people.

    • evidence:

      • varies with inclusion/exclusion

      • trait self esteem correlated with pervceived appreciation or devaluation by others

      • importance of domains of self esteem linked to cultural values

Origins of self esteem

• predictors of global self esteem

  • based on jame’s formula

    • average of domain-specific self-evaluations, weighted by importance

  • results from harter (1993)

    • self evaluations in important domains correlate with global self esteem at r= .70

    • self-evaluations in unimportant domains correlate with global sled-esteem at r= .30

• Multiple domains

  • renege of correlations with global self worth

• Self evaluation processes

  • self enhancement motive

    • selective memory for positive information

    • self serving attributions

    • basking in reflected glory

    • upward and downward social comparisons

  • other self evaluation motives

    • self verification

    • self assessment and self improvement

Cultural and self esteem

• self esteem across cultures

  • is there a universal need for self-regard?

  • evidence for self-criticism rather than self enhancement among asian populations

  • asian populations show lower levels of self esteem than do north americans

• pancultural self enhancement

  • 2 separate groups of traits:

    • individualistic traits (eg. free, independent, unique)

    • collectivistic traits (eg. agreeable, loyal, respectful)

    • Americans: more individualistic

    • Japanese: more collectivist

      Modesty in Chinese culture

• Can et al. (2011)

  • Studies 1 & 2:

    • Self-rated modesty correlated negatively with explicit self-esteem in China and US

    • Self-rated modesty correlated positively with implicitself-esteem in China, but not in US

  • Study 3:

    • After describing selves modestly, Chinese (but not Americans) showed increased implicit self-esteem

    • After describing selves immodestly, Chinese (but not Americans) showed reduced implicit self-esteem

• Indirect self enhancement

  • Muramoto (2003) → attributions of success and failure among 118 japanese undergraduates

    • ppts typically made self effacing attributions

    • expected close others to make supportive attributions → others understood them well

• self evaluation across cultures

  • culture moderates self evaluation

    • what is positively valued

    • appropriate ways of maintaining and enhancing self esteem

The ‘positive illusions’ debate

• benefits

  • happiness and contentment

  • ability to care for others

  • capacity for creative productive work

• critique by Colvin and Block (1994)

  • are they really typical of most humans or just of university students in a lab setting?

  • how do you operationalise reality to suggest when that is not real?

  • group level not individual level

  • are these positive illusions really associated with better mental health?

  • STUDIES

    • ppts rated their personality + trained examiners and friends of ppts to rate the same characteristics

    • asked which characteristics were rated as more positive and more negative.

    • friends and assessors had negative impressions of people who self enhance → correlated with ‘ego resilience’

• Taylor & Brown

  • accuracy is not necessary for mental health

  • however, it does not mean:

    • more illusion is better

    • all illusions are good

    • illusions are necessary for mental health

• remaining problems

  • measuring positive illusions: what is reality and what is not?

  • defining mental health benefits: is there an important margin of illusions? Shorter benefits vs. long-term costs”

The ‘dark side’ of high self esteem

• self esteem and aggression

  • self esteem that is insecure → aggressive behaviour due to self esteem being threatened

  • Baumeister, Smart ans Boden (1996)

    • reviewed evidence suggesting high or low self esteem among perpetrators of: murder, rape, domestic violence…

    • little psychological evidence in using measures of self esteem

    • considerable convergence in findings

      - no evidence for ‘low self esteem’ hypothesis

      - violent people favourable views of themselves → used violence to show superiority and this normally happens after threats to self esteem.

• self esteem vs. narcissism

  • distinguish ‘secure’ forms of high self esteem from ‘inflates’ views of the self, or narcissism

• Narcissism scale items

  • if i ruled the world, it would be a much better place

  • i’m going to be a great person

  • i am more capable than other people

• narcissism and aggression

  • Bushman & Baumeister (1998) - STUDY

  • people gave more negative scores to those who they thought gave them negative scores

  • trying to shoe superiority

• Is narcissism the answer?

• rethinking self esteem

  • not just high to low - is it secure?

  • markers fragile/insecure high self esteem

  • all associated with greater defensiveness

  • optimal self-esteem = stable, ‘true’, congruent