What's
The Big Deal Over Self-Esteem
From eDiets - The premier online diet, fitness, and healthy living
resource Uh-oh.
A new report reveals that high self-esteem may not be the best thing in the
world for you. People with high self-esteem, it finds, may be more of a threat
to society than those with a lower sense of self-worth.
According to the report, by a psychologist
at the prestigious London School of Economics, people with high self-esteem are
more likely than others to be racist, violent and criminal. Those with low
self-esteem might do violence to themselves via eating disorders and suicide,
but they are not a threat to others.
The London report is just one of a host of
recent studies bashing self-esteem. But I’m not so sure that self-esteem
is a bad thing. I’d still rather have more of it than less. The real issue
is what is meant by self-esteem, and whether you realize how we get it.
There’s a common notion afoot that we
can’t succeed at anything unless we have unqualified high regard for
ourselves, and it springs from some source deep inside (if only we could find
it). If that’s what you think self-esteem is, then chances are you’ll
go around looking for it in all the wrong places, attempting to bolster your
sense of self from within. You might even resort to repeating simplistic
self-affirmations.
 A very reliable
line of new research shows that self-esteem is really more a reflection of our
relationship to others. And when self-esteem gets low, the appropriate response
is not to fix your inner self but to repair your standing in the eyes of
others. In other words, to behave in ways that maintain your connections with
other people.
According to this work, we are built to be
in social relationships (although those of us who live in Western cultures have
been a tad oversold on the merits of individualism).
Evidence comes from clever studies
showing that most of us are exquisitely sensitive to signs of disapproval and
rejection from others. A raised voice or a grimace of anger from someone we
like can launch us into high anxiety and wreck our feelings about ourselves.
Self-esteem, then, is really a monitoring
system of our social approval. And it’s weighted in such a way that we
need clear demonstrations of acceptance for self-esteem to be positive. Neutral
feedback registers almost as low as outright rejection!
The London report probably confuses cause
and effect. The truth is those who are violent, racist and criminal are not
nasty because they have high self-esteem. Both their capacity for meanness and
their high self-esteem stem from something else... a more basic defect. They
lack the ability to "read" the feelings of others. They have no social or
emotional intelligence.
With an inability to detect signs of
disapproval from others, they never know what others really think of them. As a
result, they develop an unrealistic sense of themselves. And as something of a
threat to the rest of us, who is going to risk telling them the truth?
So, when your self-esteem is low, take
heart. Check your own behavior for things that could be turning other people
off. Say you’re talking to someone and you notice the person is suddenly
frowning (a clear sign of disapproval). It’s time to think to yourself, "I
probably said something they don’t like. I’ve got to let them know I
was just kidding." |
