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THE TROUBLE WITH SELF-ESTEEM
by
Michael R. Edelstein
High self-esteem is now viewed much as cocaine was in the 1880s--a
wondrous new cure for all ills, miraculously free of dangerous
side-effects.
Self-esteem is both the sacred cow and the golden calf of our culture.
Nothing is esteemed higher than self-esteem, and no self-esteem can be too
high. Nathaniel Branden, a leading exponent of self- esteem, raises the
question: "Is it possible to have too much self-esteem?" and gives the
resounding answer: "No, it is not, no more than it is possible to have too
much physical health."1
What Self-Esteem Is
To esteem something means to have a high opinion of it. To have high
self-esteem means holding a high opinion of oneself. This high opinion is
usually based on a high overall rating of oneself as a person, and this
high rating is in turn based on evaluating one's actual performance. There
are two popular views of self-esteem. One is the theory that it's good for
people to feel good about themselves, irrespective of how well or badly
they have actually performed. If they esteem themselves highly, they will
automatically do better--and even if they don't do better, well, they'll
at least feel happier. This theory has been applied in recent years as an
educational technique, the "self- esteem curriculum," devoted to
convincing students that they are wonderful and "special." Educationally,
it has yielded disappointing results.
The other approach to self-esteem seems to be popular with libertarians.
This approach views self- esteem as something earned. If we perform
better, we will then feel better about ourselves. We will rate ourselves
more highly, and this will cause us to feel better. Feeling better is
therefore our psychological reward for performing better. Usually, it's
also supposed to cause us, in turn, to perform even better.
At first glance, these two approaches seem to have little in common, but
on closer examination, the first approach usually turns out to be a
variant of the second. The teacher who tries to cultivate high self-esteem
in her students usually does not say: "Feel good, no matter how badly you
do!" Instead, the teacher deliberately lowers standards, so that the
students get lots of praise for very minor achievements, while poor or
mediocre work is accepted as adequate or better. And the proponents of
earned self-esteem, when they confront the fact that many individuals make
themselves needlessly miserable by comparing their performance to some
ideal, also advise those individuals to lower their standards, so that
they will feel better at a lower threshold of achievement.
In practice, therefore, both approaches to building self-esteem have a
common thread: a person judges his performance to be good, then he forms a
higher opinion of himself, not just his performance. Then he basks in the
glow of contemplating what a terrific person he is. Then, he feels
happier, and performs even better.
Doubts about High Self-Esteem
Psychiatrists, politicians, educators, and religious leaders have all been
drafted into the movement to make people feel good about themselves. High
self-esteem is the enchanting magic powder which will bring sobriety and
civility to the teenage gangsters of the inner cities as well as bliss and
fulfillment to depressed suburban housewives.
A multitude of therapists and gurus are quick to identify low self-esteem
as the root cause of emotional disturbance, addiction, poor relationships,
failure to learn in school, child abuse, and a host of other ills. Yet the
evidence points in the other direction.
Studies on issues from smoking to violence, along with comprehensive
reviews of the entire self- esteem literature, not only cast doubt on the
benefits of high self-esteem but suggest that it might even be harmful.
Psychologists at Iowa State University have linked high self-esteem with
the failure to quit smoking.
"People with high self-esteem have difficulty admitting their behavior has
been unhealthy and/or unwise," writes researcher Frederick Gibbons.2
A study popularized by Charles Krauthammer, writing in Time magazine,
investigated the self- concepts of 13-year-olds in Britain, Canada,
Ireland, Korea, Spain, and the United States. Each was administered a
standardized math test. In addition, they were asked to rate the
statement: "I am good at mathematics." The Americans judged their
abilities the most highly (68 percent agreed with the statement!). On the
actual math test, the Americans came last. Krauthammer concludes:
"American students may not know their math, but they have evidently
absorbed the lessons of the newly fashionable self-esteem curriculum
wherein kids are taught to feel good about themselves."3
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University and the University of
Virginia conducted a comparison of evidence from a variety of studies
concerning individuals involved with aggressive behavior of all kinds:
assault, homicide, rape, domestic violence, juvenile delinquency,
political
terror, prejudice, oppression, and genocide. In some studies, self-esteem
was specifically measured; in others it was inferred. The authors
concluded that "aggressive, violent, and hostile people consistently
express favorable views of themselves." It's therefore pointless to treat
rapists, murderers, and muggers by convincing them that they are superior
beings, for this is precisely what such criminals typically believe
already.
These researchers considered the possibility that in such cases observable
high self-esteem was a disguised form of low self-esteem, but were unable
to find any corroboration for it. The authors conclude that "the societal
pursuit of high self-esteem for everyone may literally end up doing
considerable harm."4 According to American Educator, psychologist and
researcher Roy Baumeister has "probably published more studies on
self-esteem in the past 20 years that anybody else in the U.S.
(or elsewhere)." As Baumeister has observed, many violent crimes result
when an individual defends a swollen self-image against a perceived
attack. "They'll lash out to try to head off anything that might lower
their self-esteem."
Baumeister concludes that "the enthusiastic claims of the self-esteem
movement mostly range from fantasy to hogwash. . . . Yes, a few people
here and there end up worse off because their self-esteem was too low.
Then, again, other people end up worse off because their self-esteem was
too high. And most of the time self-esteem makes surprisingly little
difference."5
A comprehensive review of the self-esteem literature found that: "the
associations between self- esteem, and its expected consequences are
mixed, insignificant, or absent. This nonrelationship holds between
self-esteem and teen age pregnancy, self-esteem and child abuse,
self-esteem and most cases of alcohol and drug abuse."6
Millions of taxpayers' dollars have been expended by the government on
professional training to boost the self-esteem of teachers and students,
and even more millions have been spent by private individuals paying
therapists to help them enhance their self-esteem. Yet the available
evidence does not support the theory that attempts to raise people's
self-esteem necessarily produce substantial benefits, and some evidence
suggests high self-esteem may have pathological consequences. We should be
cautious about accepting enthusiastic claims for the unalloyed benefits of
high self-esteem.
Invisible Low Self-Esteem
How do advocates of building high self-esteem respond when confronted with
this kind of evidence? They have two answers.
The first is to say that when a person seems to have high self-esteem and
also has a screwed-up life, that person really has low self-esteem.
This reply has a certain plausibility, because we're all familiar with the
stereotype of the loud, brash, assertive person who is inwardly
frightened, cringing, and self-doubting. Novelists and movie-makers love
such characters, and they do occasionally exist. But mostly, in real life,
if persons are outwardly loud, brash, and assertive, they are likely to be
inwardly loud, brash, and assertive, or at least, more so than those who
are outwardly timid or self-effacing. If someone exhibits obvious signs of
thinking
that he is one of the superior beings of the universe, chances are that he
really believes--yes, way deep down--that he is one of the superior beings
of the universe. In other words, he's living in a fantasy world out of
touch with reality.
Furthermore, if observable self-esteem is to be brushed aside as
immaterial, then this has two difficulties.
Empirically, the claim that high self-esteem is good for you becomes
unfalsifiable and therefore untestable. We are unable to determine whether
there's any truth in it.
Pragmatically, if we're trying to help people to improve their lives, all
we can work on is the observable. If we try to help them by building their
self-esteem, this becomes futile unless we can be reasonably sure that we
can tell whether their self-esteem has gone up or down. The building of a
kind of self-esteem which can never be discerned in someone's behavior
(including what that person says) is not really a practical plan.
Authentic and Inauthentic Self-Esteem
The second answer of the self-esteem promoters to the discouraging
evidence on the practical results of self-esteem is to make a distinction
between "authentic" and "inauthentic" self-esteem. Only authentic
self-esteem brings true happiness, they claim.
As self-esteem in practice means feeling good about yourself because of
how well you have done, increasing your self-esteem requires watching your
behavior to see whether you have in fact done well. Self-esteem promoters
often disagree about what aspects of your behavior you should be watching.
We can look at it this way. Advocates of high self-esteem think: I must do
x. If I manage to at least do x, I can congratulate myself on being a good
person. If I do less than x, then it follows that I will
judge myself to be a bad person.
The advocates of high self-esteem frequently disagree on what "x" is. They
each have their own favored criterion for assessing performance, their own
choice of x, or perhaps their own varying standards for measuring x. But
they all agree that the name of the game is pursuit of a feeling of self-
worth, to be attained by doing (at least) x.
According to Nathaniel Branden, for example, x equals "the choices we make
concerning awareness, the honesty of our relationship to reality, the
level of our personal integrity." Branden warns against deriving
self-esteem from success in particular pursuits--in Branden's view that
would be what we are calling "inauthentic" self-esteem. Branden maintains
that we're worthwhile as humans if we make good choices, act honestly and
act with integrity. We can then esteem ourselves highly because we can
tell ourselves, in Branden's words, "I coped well with the basic
challenges of life."7
When the self-esteem concept is criticized, its proponents can defend it
by explaining that the reason self-esteem didn't seem to work in a
particular case is not that the very concept is flawed, but rather that
the wrong "x" was chosen. Therefore the self-esteem that resulted was not
authentic self-esteem but "pseudo-self-esteem."
But notice that all self-esteem theory has the same pattern, though this
is not usually clearly spelled out. First, you set a goal. Second, you act
in pursuit of that goal. Third, you observe your action and its
consequences. Fourth, you evaluate your action. Fifth, you globalize that
evaluation: you move from evaluating your action to evaluating yourself as
a total person. And sixth, you ( supposedly) feel and act better
thereafter if you decide you're a great person, or you (supposedly) feel
and act worse if you conclude you're a pathetic loser.
The Alternative to Self-Esteem
The desirability of raising self-esteem seems persuasive because people
with serious emotional problems often have low self-esteem: they hold a
low opinion of themselves and dwell on their shortcomings. So it's an
appealing idea to improve individuals' rating of themselves, and this
seems to require getting them to hold a higher opinion of
themselves--building their self-esteem.
The way of thinking I have just outlined may seem at first to be so
obvious as to be unquestionable. But in fact, it commits an error. It
assumes that the only alternative to giving yourself a low rating is to
give yourself a high rating. This way of thinking considers only two
alternatives: either you rate yourself as a bad person (a failure, a
louse, a nothing) or your rate yourself as a good person (a success, a
paragon, a fine human being). That ignores another option: don't rate
yourself at all.
It's the essence of the gospel of self-esteem that you should rate
yourself highly. Almost unnoticed is the assumption that you can't avoid
rating yourself, and equally inconspicuous is the practical corollary of
raising your self-esteem: if you set out to "build your self-esteem," you
become preoccupied with your rating of yourself.
Not rating yourself, refraining from self-rating, means that you can
evaluate what you do without drawing conclusions about yourself as a total
person. For instance, if you are frequently late for appointments, you may
think, "Being late for appointments has consequences I don't like. Is
there some way I can stop being late?" You don't have to think, "Because I
am often late for appointments I am a loser." You don't need to draw any
conclusions about your total self. That may sound unobjectionable. But
suppose that you conquer your habit of being late. Now, you're always
punctual. What harm can it do to pat yourself on the back? Why not think,
"I'm an admirably efficacious person, because I'm always on time"?
It can indeed do harm! You are drawing comfort and sustenance from your
judgment that you are a fine person, and you are requiring yourself to
perform well to support that judgment. This leads to anxiety. Moreover,
the next time you don't perform so well, you will then be liable to feel,
not just regret and sadness that you didn't do what would have been best,
but demoralization and discouragement, because you now have evidence that
you are not such a good person.
We can acknowledge that low self-esteem may be a problem, without
recommending high self- esteem. If someone has low self-esteem, we need
not try to replace that person's low self-esteem with high self-esteem. We
can instead encourage them to stop globally evaluating themselves. Instead
of low self-esteem or high self-esteem, they can have no self-esteem. Or
better, since "no self-esteem" sounds like low self-esteem, they can do
without self-rating.
If we do not rate our total selves as good or bad, what attitude is it
best for us to take towards ourselves? Instead of esteeming ourselves, we
can unconditionally accept ourselves as we are. No matter how well we
perform, no matter how brilliant our accomplishments, we are always
imperfect, fallible human beings. Conversely, no matter how badly we screw
up, we always do some things right
(as demonstrated by the fact that we have survived this far).
Unconditional self-acceptance doesn't mean that we don't want to change
anything. It means that we unconditionally accept the reality of who we
are and what we are like. This does not involve any overall evaluation of
our worth or quality as human beings. It means that nothing that we do
will make us believe that we are, in toto, terrific or terrible, heroic or
horrible, godlike or goblinlike.
Having unconditionally accepted ourselves, we can then concentrate on what
we do and how we can improve it--not because this will make us feel
wonderful about ourselves--give us high self-esteem-- but because we will
then more effectively accomplish the goals we have set ourselves, and feel
wonderful about that.
The Gap in Self-Esteem Theory
There's a strange aspect of the reasoning of many self-esteem theorists.
They often seem to assume that if you perform well according to their
chosen x, this will automatically cause you to esteem yourself highly.
Robert Ringer, for instance, states: "It takes a good deal of practice to
play the game effectively but a good player reaps the rewards of
self-esteem, the self-esteem which comes from
knowing who you are, what you stand for, and where you're going in life."
What is odd about this view is that Ringer appears to believe that
self-esteem wells up spontaneously within you if you do something. He
doesn't seem to understand that, whatever you do, this can only affect
your self-esteem if you evaluate what you have done, and evaluate your
total self based on what you have done, that this requires judging your
behavior and your self according to some standard, and that you are free
to perform these mental acts of evaluation or not to perform them.
Nathaniel Branden also writes as though he believed that if you have coped
well with the basic challenges of life (his nominated "x"), this must
automatically cause you to possess high self-esteem.9
And, presumably, if the truth is that you have not coped well with the
basic challenges of life, that must automatically cause you to possess low
self-esteem.
You are apparently unable to react in any other way, for example by
concluding: "I haven't coped well with the basic challenges of life but
I'm not going to let this get me down." Or: "I haven't coped well with the
basic challenges of life. Tough shit! I'll just try harder." Or: "I
haven't coped well with the basic challenges of life. What a fascinating
specimen I am! I'll write a novel about myself."
Self-esteem advocates often seem to assume that judging your total self is
involuntary, and automatic. However, esteeming oneself involves choices
among alternatives: you choose to act, you choose to evaluate your
actions, you choose to extend the evaluation of your actions to an
evaluation of your total self, you choose the standard by which your total
self will be evaluated.
To esteem our selves or to rate our selves flows from choices we make in
how we will think: cognitive choices. If we fail at some endeavor, or a
whole series of endeavors, we are not fated to think the worse of
ourselves. If we do draw the conclusion that we are worse as persons
because we have failed in some specific endeavors, that conclusion arises
from our philosophy of life, our beliefs, our habits of thought.
When I say that these are matters of choice, I mean this in the same way
that learning a foreign language is a matter of choice. Changing our
habits of rating or not rating ourselves requires repetition and
reinforcement over a period of time. We may in the past have
unreflectively accepted that when we screw up (or fail to "cope well with
the basic challenges of life"), this diminishes our worth as persons. At
the moment when we draw this conclusion, it may therefore indeed be
"automatic."
In exactly the same way, the horror of a superstitious person when a black
cat crosses his path may be automatic and may seem involuntary. But that
person can question the validity of his superstitious belief and can, over
time, learn to accept that a black cat is not something to be dreaded.
The conviction that our self-worth rises or falls according to our
performance is indeed a kind of superstition. If we were to discuss the
experience of dread which seizes a superstitious person who has seen a
black cat, as though this feeling did not depend upon that person's
superstitious beliefs but flowed simply from his seeing a black cat, we
would be obscuring the vital part played in this seemingly automatic
process by the person's beliefs--beliefs which can be changed, though
changing them may take persistent effort.
Problems with Self-Esteem
Fifty years ago, marathon runner and writer Trevor Smith, then 15, spent a
hiking vacation with a group of classmates, climbing Switzerland's
Stanserhorn. One thousand feet from the summit, exhausted and struggling,
Smith chose to turn back.
Later that evening at dinner, reunited with all his classmates, Smith "saw
the glow of satisfaction on the faces of the boys who made the summit
safely . . . I regretted bitterly that I had quit when others succeeded."
Smith continues to view the decision to abort his ascent as so horrible
that even today he relives it "as if it happened yesterday."
As an adult, Smith climbed peaks, paddled white water, and ran hundreds of
races. He concludes:
"Sometimes I've paid a high price in discomfort and many injuries. But
achieving goals gave a feeling of self-esteem that healed everything."
Smith's lesson for his readers? Develop high self- esteem. "Tell yourself
that you can do just about anything that any other human being can do . .
. If you believe you can do just about anything, usually you can."10
Trevor Smith's thinking illustrates the essence of the self-esteem notion:
self-rating. When you do well you rate yourself as a "good" person, you
have high self-esteem; you can do anything. When you do poorly, you're a
worthless failure. (Or if not worthless, you're certainly worth less.) So
your motivation to do well is that you will derive satisfaction from
proving that you're a good person.
Smith's widely accepted but dangerous view of self-esteem illustrates its
inherent traps. If you subscribe to his self-esteem notion, when you do
well you'll tend to take an overblown, grandiose view of your self. And
when you do poorly you're likely to feel depressed and hopeless. Many
people who pursue this approach live their lives either anxiously and
compulsively striving to prove themselves (instead of enjoying themselves
by striving to attain their goals) or phobically avoiding challenging and
competitive situations.
In the 1960s, Joe Pine, an acerbic conservative TV talk show host, had as
his guest the long-haired rock musician Frank Zappa. Pine was prone to
surliness, which a leg amputation--he wore a wooden prosthetic--may have
exacerbated. As soon as Zappa had been introduced and seated, the
following exchange occurred:
PINE: I guess your long hair makes you a girl.
ZAPPA: I guess your wooden leg makes you a table.11
This brings out another of the attendant difficulties with the pursuit of
self-esteem. If I am to decide whether I am doing well or badly as a total
person, I have to somehow reduce to a common measure all the varied
aspects of my performance in different fields, to come up with a single
score or rating of my self.
Individuals are unique and many-faceted. "Weighting" all the different
aspects of one's behavior is unavoidably subjective. Suppose that your
daughter is an excellent swimmer but a poor runner, or is well above
average in math but well below average in languages, or is often unusually
considerate of her little brother but sometimes mercilessly teases him to
the point of tears. There is no objective method for making these
different behaviors commensurable.
In practice, people who pursue self-esteem usually don't get very far in
trying to formulate a weighted evaluation of all their performances.
Instead, they tend to fall back on some formula which grossly
oversimplifies the picture. For example, a child may become convinced that
he is no good because he
has done poorly at spelling. He may then give up trying, using as an
excuse the "fact" that he is a no- good failure.
Furthermore, people often change--not all at once, overnight, but in
particular ways continually. As Albert Ellis puts it, "People's intrinsic
value or worth cannot really be measured accurately because their being
includes their becoming."12
Another problem is that once we get into the habit of thinking that we are
good because we have performed well or bad because we have performed
poorly, we generally find that this is not symmetrical. There is something
innate in human beings--perhaps it has survival value--to pay attention to
what is creating discomfort and to pay no attention to what is going OK.
Self-raters therefore tend to drift downward in their self-rating, drawing
gloomy conclusions when they fall short, and not fully balancing these
with optimistic conclusions when they do well. This tendency is all the
more powerful because of a fact I have omitted to mention so far, for the
sake of simplicity. People who rate themselves always find in practice
that "feeling good" or "feeling bad" about themselves is not stable. So,
when we say that someone has high or low self-esteem, we're referring to
an average: how good they feel about themselves always fluctuates. Our
moods fluctuate naturally, and hanging our sense of well-being on the peg
of our self-rating tends to magnify the mood swings.
Just Say No to High Self-Esteem
It is rational to be concerned about your effectiveness in pursuing your
goals, and therefore in dealing with problems that arise. It is not
rational to be concerned about your overall rating as a person.
The pursuit of high self-esteem, even where it seems to be working for a
while, can be hazardous. And at best, self-esteem accomplishes nothing
important that can't be accomplished by self- acceptance.
Notes:
1. The Power of Self-Esteem http://laissezfairebooks.com/product.cfm?
op=view&pid=NB5600&aid=GC (Deerfield Beach: Health Communications, 1992),
p. 46.
2. F.X. Gibbons, T.J. Hedges, and A. Benthin. "Cognitive Reactions to
Smoking Relapse: The Reciprocal Relationship between Dissonance and
Self-Esteem." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology http://www.apa.org/journals/psp.html
72: 1 (1997), pp. 184-195.
3. "Education: Doing Bad and Feeling Good." Time http://www.time.com (5
February 1990).
4. R.F. Baumeister, J.M. Boden, and L. Smart. "Relation of Threatened
Egotism to Violence and Aggression: The Dark Side of High Self-Esteem."
Psychological Review http://www.apa.org/journals/ rev.html 103: 1
(February 1996), pp. 5-33.
5. Roy F. Baumeister. "Should Schools Try to Boost Self-Esteem?" American
Educator http://www. aft.org/publications/american_educator/ (Summer
1996), p. 14.
6. A. Mecca and N. Smelser, The Social Importance of Self-Esteem http://www.amazon.com/exec/
obidos/ASIN/0520067096/ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989),
p. 23.
7. The Power of Self-Esteem , pp. 59, vii.
8. Robert J. Ringer, Looking out for #1 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0449210103/
(New York: Fawcett Crest, 1977), p. 87; and see pp. 11-12.
9. Branden advises that we judge ourselves by what is within our
volitional control, not by what is under the control of other people (The
Power of Self-Esteem http://laissezfairebooks.com/product. cfm?op=view&pid=NB5600&aid=GC,
p. 52). He does not address the issue of our being free to
abstain from any self-judgment at all. We can speculate that he might
think this is impossible, or he might think it would have harmful
consequences for our personal efficacy. In either case, he would be
mistaken.
10. "Perspectives: Believe in Yourself." Running and Fit News (June 1997),
p. 3.
11. Cited in Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
http://www.amazon.com/
exec/obidos/ASIN/0688128165/ (New York: Morrow, 1993), p. 274.
12. Early Theories and Practices of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and
How They Have Been Augmented and Revised during the Last Three Decades.
Journal of Rational-Emotive and Cognitive- Behavioral Therapy, 17:2
(1999), pp. 69-93.
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