Self Esteem

Research Paper: Self Esteem

"Should high self-esteem be a goal in society?" This question is raised often in the essay being reviewed, and in the end is the question you are left asking yourself.

Self-esteem is literally defined by how much value people place on themselves (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, Vohs, 2003). High self-esteem has become a growing craze ever since the 1970's, turning from a 'forbidden sin' to a 'way of life', Baumeister et al (2003).

The essay on self esteem poses the question, as said in the title, 'Does high self-esteem cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles?', Baumeister et al (2003). Through specific and thorough research, Baumeister et al. (2003) came to the unsatisfactory findings that high self-esteem vaguely, if at all, has an effect on any of these questions with the exception of happiness. Theoretically, especially in the Western World, self-esteem is hypothesized to have a great effect on the outcome of such things as performance in school, work, success, friends, groups, and so on. But, in reality there is hardly any correlation to these ideas. Also, there are too many problems with the methods of research and the nature of self-esteem to be completely accurate in the answer. The researchers then talk about the importance of self-esteem, its place with individuals and society, and how best to improve it.

The essay spends a lot of time explaining all the various ways to study self-esteem. Baumeister et al (2003), eventually decided that their research would be narrowed down to and focused on articles that focused on the consequences if self-esteem, one's that the hypothesis' favored self-esteem, and that were all from PsychINFO. The psychologists ran into four main problems with the research of self-esteem. First, they dismissed a lot of articles, especially on the exact subject of self-esteem. Second, is that people with high self-esteem view themselves as better than everyone else and everything. People with low self-esteem seem to estimate everything as worthlessness. Third, the difficulty of distinguishing causal relationships leads to questions unanswered. Fourth, heterogeneity of high self-esteem leaves third variables. The

psychologists researched for 10 months extensively, they found that most of it was explicit, objective but still experiments had lack of control of third variables, and not enough studies done yet; but, came up with some interesting finds.

The key articles reviewed were on the correlation between self-esteem and: (a) school performance, (b) job and task performance, (c) interpersonal relations, (d) aggression, violence, delinquency, and antisocial behavior, (e) happiness, coping, depression, and (f) health, smoking, alcohol and other drugs, sex, eating.

Most of the results were weak, some null, and the strongest one was the correlation between high self-esteem and happiness. Even though this study was done with college students and is completely subjective, this study done by Deiner and Deiner (1995) showed that high self-esteem and happiness (life satisfaction) had very high correlation among the students. Other research led to findings such as, people with high self-esteem have a higher regard of themselves than according to peers, they are more persistent and strategize in the face of failure, and sometimes perform better in groups, but also have a tendency to judge others and discriminate.

All in all, the authors are left with an expert opinion rather than an absolute answer to their questions. The concept of high self-esteem is still theoretical and results are relative due to variables.

As far as critiquing the article, I thought that it was well written. It gave full and detailed definitions and explanations for why they went about their research the way they did. Personally, I felt let down by the end, because it still leaves me with questions unanswered. That is why this essay is good because it provokes me to ask more questions and want to promote more research for the topic of high self-esteem. The fact that all the authors are experts on self-esteem and stay focused on the topic with their research and selection of articles are good. My one critique would be that they only used one source for the articles which was PsychINFO. This leads me to wonder if further sources would lead to different findings.

The ethics of whether the level of self-esteem should be controlled are somewhat discussed in the essay, such as the thought of accurate self-esteem. The pro's of this idea are that people would make better choices, and the con's are this would lead to a better view of reality, which may lead to depression. So the choice then would be between better choices or happiness.

Another example of the question of ethics would be the persuasiveness of the essay. At the end, in the conclusions, the authors relate their feelings about seeking self-esteem. They suggest that self-esteem should be treated as an award for ethical behavior and worthy achievements, Baumeister et al (2003). Yet, earlier in the essay it is written that the value of high self-esteem varies in cultures, (i.e. collectivistic vs. individualistic). Therefore, their 'expert'