Beliefs About Low Self-Esteem 'Are Myths'

London - Many of the most commonly held beliefs about low self-esteem are myths without reliable evidence to support them, says a study published on Wednesday.

Low self-esteem has become one of the most frequently cited explanations for social and personal problems, ranging from young people's involvement in violent crime to adult failures in business, and the US state of California has gone so far as to invest significant public funds in trying to raise the self-esteem of its citizens.

But Nicholas Emler, a social psychologist who conducted the study, said his research showed that people with a high opinion of themselves could pose a far greater threat to others than those with a low sense of self-worth.

"People with low self-esteem tend to injure themselves rather than other people. Those with high self-esteem tend to damage other people, either because they are reckless and dangerous or because they're unpleasant," he said.

Young people with very high self-esteem are more likely than others to hold racist attitudes, reject social pressures from adults and peers, and engage in physically risky pursuits such as drink-driving or driving too fast, the study said.

"Widespread belief in 'raising self-esteem' as an all-purpose cure for social problems has created a huge market for self-help manuals and educational programmes that is threatening to become the psychotherapeutic equivalent of snake oil," said Emler, a professor at the London School of Economics.

High self-esteem was unrelated to real accomplishments. "What causes people to rise in management hierarchies is largely unrelated to their objective performance, but is related to their ability to convince their superiors they should be promoted," he said.

But his study, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the UK's largest independent social research and development charity, found that relatively low self-esteem was not a risk factor for delinquency, violence, drug use, alcohol abuse, educational under-attainment or racism.

It was, however, a risk factor for attempting suicide, depression, teenage pregnancy and being victimised by bullies, he said in the study, which followed the fortunes of children and young people over time.

Relatively low childhood self-esteem also seemed to be associated with adolescent eating disorders. Among young adult males it seemed linked with low earnings and job problems.

Emler said the most important influence on young people's self-esteem was their parents, "partly as a result of genetic inheritance and partly through the degree of love, concern, acceptance and interest that they show to their children".

He said his study, which took a year to complete, reviewed research worldwide from the 19th century onwards, much of it from the United States. - Reuters

Low self esteem is the result of bad behavior, not the root of it.

Yeah, the ole if you were sexually and physically and verbally abused as a child and have a poor self esteem now, it was the result of your bad behavior. If your father was a drunk and beat your mother and you kids...you deserved it. You must have missed logic in college.

Those with high self-esteem tend to damage other people, either because they are reckless and dangerous or because they're unpleasant," he said.

Let's see.....when children are obnoxious and destructive, we tell them they're abnormal and control it with Ritalin. Then we complain that their precious self-esteem is low and needs to be raised at any cost - or with happy pills. Anyone else see a paradox here?

Personally, I subscribe to the theory that kids will develop self-esteem (self-respect?) when they accomplish something worth esteeming, ie, learning to read, etc. They don't need to be patted on the head constantly by adults. Kids, for the most part, are not stupid - they know when they're being patronized.

It was, however, a risk factor for attempting suicide, depression, teenage pregnancy and being victimised by bullies...

This seems kind of serious. Plus, I don't believe it says anywhere in the article that low self-esteem is a result of bad behavior.

Attributing problems such as violence to high (inflated) self-esteem makes sense, at least anecdotally. It would explain why inflated self-esteem and violence seem to be primarily male issues. Although we have made great strides toward becoming a merit-based society, some parts of our society are still patriarchal. Are poor families/societies more patriarchal? This might explain some of what WideAwake is talking about in post 2. The men assume the position of power without earning it and, hence, have inflated self-esteem and are violent, etc.

Low self esteem is the result of bad behavior, not the root of it.

Granted the original statement may have been a slight oversimplification. I experienced nearly all of the abuse you listed. Do you suppose that I would have "high self-esteem" now if I had stayed stuck in the mindset of a victim?

Yes, abuse sends a message to a child that they are worthless and unloved. It creates inappropriate feelings like shame, that lead to depression and/or anger. But your post seems to imply that the "poor self-esteem" can't be overcome by choosing good behavior. Being abused creates a lot of feelings that might lead to bad behavior. But giving in to that sure isn't the path to higher self-esteem!

Instead, I have learned through Jesus and His Word that our dignity is based on His having created us in the image of God. Our worth to Him is proved by His death in our place. That is where true "esteem" comes from.

My self-respect, OTH, is most definitely rooted in each new accomplishment. Sometimes that's something as simple as getting through another day with my own kids feeling loved, valued and cherished because I didn't succumb to abusing them out of personal selfishness or foolishness! I refuse to give myself any excuses that would lead to bad behavior.

OK... you have not demonstrated the link between abuse and low self esteem. Furthermore, if you can find one person who was abused and his good self esteem, then logically (ahem), your point is disproved (and I guarantee that at least one such person exists). Self esteem is simply how I feel about myself. This implies no external influence. When I behave according to my own sense of right and wrong, then I feel good about myself. And visa versa. You cannot demonstrate a cause and effect relationship between the external force and the internal sense of worth, because it doesn't exist.

The stupidity of concern with self-esteem rather than self-respect has been one of my pet hobby horses for years now, along with the inordinate concern in every psychology class, popular psychology book, management guru, organizational consultant and thus most schools, churches and businesses with process rather than actual results. But that's a whole other story....

Well stated. I've been in the belly of the self-esteem beast. Edited a book by Nathaniel Branden, the "father of the self-esteem movement." Branden actually wrote that self=esteem resulted from accomplishment, but the idiots who followed him distilled that part out. Then I spent some time with a group of followers of Virginia Satir, a self-styled family therapist and self-esteem guruette. They called themselves "The Hundred Beautiful People," a real case of hubris, since most of them were ugly. Branden was NOT a member.

Anyway, the 100 were psychologists from all over the country who pushed the self-esteem sans self-respect movement into the schools. They made a CA state congressman a member and he, in turn, sponsored successful legislation to get self-esteem legislation into the schools. I can't even begin to describe what unprincipled, self-serving, idiots these people are -- or were, since they were rather elderly. One of the fun things they did at their meetings was to swap wives, at least some of them. So you see how upstanding and moral they are...I ran for the door!

I've read some Nathaniel Branden and I do recall his making the point about accomplishment; however, I thought he was wrong in failing to distinguish between self-esteem and self-respect and I would fault him (and he a former acolyte of Ayn Rand and her cold logic) for sloppy thinking in so doing. His self-talk stuff, too, degenerates easily from talking yourself into doing things that create self-respect into vainglory and delusional self-congratulation.

Oh, yes, I, too, have seen the belly of the pop psych beast, beginning in the '60s with people who dangerously popularized their misunderstanding of Fritz Perls' gestalt therapy: tearing people down and then failing to put them back together again, through Est and so-onward into self-esteem. I agree with you about the lack of character and moral fiber of these popular gurus and gurettes, when I was at the University of California the sociology and psychology departments were the most notorious for professors hitting on students and passing them around the departments from professor to professor and then to the TAs as their freshness and novelty wore off. I knew a few girls who'd been passed around that way, and they were pretty bitter when they figured out how they'd been used.

WE may have passed in the night, CR. I spent a year with Perls in Big Sur. HE tore people down and failed to put them back together. I rather liked him personally, he'd come up to my house on Partington Ridge for dinner, and even babysat for my kids a couple of times. Fascinating conversationalist. But as a therapist? Not good. I think he'd never met anyone like me. He kept trying to convince me to admit I was Jewish, but I was a very Irish convent-school catholic from midwest. He didn't have a clue!

I did EST in LA in maybe 74-75, had big fun, later met Werner and could not stand him, and the feeling was mutual. The Human Potential Movement, as it was called in the late '60s, was interesting and fun for this (formerly) extremely uptight lady....I think the physical stuff was best: rolfing, bioenergetics, alexander technique were quite beneficial and didn't muck with your mind.

When people ask me what I got from those years, I smile enigmatically and say, "I learned to dance." I mean that literally. Until I had a session with Ida Rolf, I was so cranked up I could neither rock nor roll, and I was very young.

One of the fellows in a month-long Perls workshop at Esalen was a teacher at Berkeley and member of "The Sexual Freedom League." He used to sit in Perls' hot seat and complain about how tired he was of bleeping every girl he met....maybe you knew him??? LOL!

You cannot demonstrate a cause and effect relationship between the external force and the internal sense of worth, because it doesn't exist.

And even a strong statement like yours does not disprove the cause and effect relationship.

We are social beings. With some exceptions (psychotics, or others whose mental processes are somehow impaired) people measure themselves against the people around them. Part of our internal sense of worth is affected by how well we think we compare. How others think we measure up, as communicated by their actions and their words, is also an influence. How important those other people are to us affects how great that influence is.

Do you really believe that a strongly negative message delivered by a parent in the form of abuse over a long period of time would have no effect at all on the child's internal sense of worth?

I will say that ideally, your statement should be true. We should eventually mature enough to realize that people are fickle. Their good opinions are so fleeting and fragile that basing our sense of worth on them to any degree, or striving to keep those opinions high, is not worth the effort. Our worth is based on our Creator -- just as our Declaration of Independence affirmed. That is self-evident. Any step off of that foundational truth sends us down the path to all kinds of foolishness.

Wrong. A poor sense of right and wrong come from being unloved (parents who don't love their children don't teach them this). Self worth is internal. I decide if I like me, and no one else can decide this for me. And likewise I have the power to change me if I don't like who I am.

Hmmmm. Sounds like standards are important at least somewhere along the line.

Where all of this concern about self-esteem went wrong is that if confused self-esteem with self-respect. The fundamental difference, which should obvious to everyone but an unusually stupid child of ten (to paraphrase Bertrand Russell), is that self-respect is based on achieveing genuine goals and knowing that one has actually accomplished things while self-esteem is simply one's high opinion of oneself regardless of the facts.

I started to comment, then I read your post and realized that you had said it much more succintly and beautifully than I could have.

Ah, yes, the Human Potential Movement, I'd almost forgotten the term.

Sounds indeed like we passed in the night. My reaction to Fritz was similar to yours, although I knew a few people who thought he was a decent therapist. What a guy to talk with, though!

Speaking of the HPM bleeping, do you remember the guy in Santa Barbara (no it wasn't Gary, it was Patrick something or other, a psych grad student) who wrote a book Humanistic Hustling? I ran across a copy when cleaning out stuff a couple of months ago. Unreal. I actually knew a couple of his conquests. Their comments about him (after publication of the book) wer e scathing, but insightful. One of them, who had also met Fritz, thought that gestalt was all about Fritz getting laid, and was only given a respectable quasi-scientific basis by Paul Goodman and Hefferline. One step above Reich was her take.

Yet these kids would brag about their sexual-physical-mental prowess, would intimidate other students verbally and physically and would take anything which was not nailed down.

I don't know where these kids get "pumped-up", but they display a total lack of respect for others as well as themselves. They will always have that chip on their shoulder (even in jail). Does this behavior stem from an inferiority complex?

Well said, wideawake.

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