Self-Esteem: It’s Not What You Think It Is
Written by Peter Julian on August 15th, 2008We’ve been tossing around the term ’self-esteem’ for a long time in education and psychology, but what does it really mean? Is it the same thing as confidence? Can it be taught or improved? Let’s start with a basic definition of the term.
Before we get much farther in our discussion, then, let’s agree on a basic definition. Self-esteem is the belief each person has about whether or not they are valuable. If they don’t think they have much value, that’s referred to as ‘low self-esteem’. If, on the other hand, they see themselves as being valuable, they are thought to have ‘healthy self-esteem’.
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.
In the early 1980s, California schools launched the first ’self-esteem-based education’ in the U.S. This curriculum was based on the idea that children with healthy self-esteem tend to do better in school, avoid drugs and refrain from teen sex.
The leaders in this school of thought believed that children’s self esteem was impacted most by the things that happened to them early in life. Millions of dollars have been spent nationwide teaching children they are valuable members of society, in the hope they will grow up to be responsible and successful.
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.
But a seismic shift has occurred in the evidence on which that belief was based. Recent studies, most notably by Brown University, seem to indicate that there’s very little difference in drug use, teen pregnancy or failure in school between those with poor or healthy self-esteem. A further blow to that movement is that the new study shows a person must succeed before they are able to exhibit healthy self-esteem.
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.
Said another way, one’s social values, or what one’s society determines to be valuable, create the basis for whether or not they feel that they, themselves, have an internal sense of value. For instance, if the society in which one lives places a high value on knowledge, and they have the capability to study and learn easily, then self-esteem increases as ‘measure-up’ to that social value.
And so, we circle back around to our original question: ‘what is self-esteem?’ I hope you’ll agree to a slight refinement in our original definition. And here it is, “self-esteem is the way a person looks at himself against the backdrop of what his society defines as valuable.” Keep that in mind if you decide to look further into what influences a person’s self-esteem.
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