Self-esteem

Self-esteem is clearly one of the most popular topics in modern psychology, with more than 35,000 publications on the subject, and still counting. The self-esteem construct has been shown to have connections with a wide array of other constructs, demonstrating that self-esteem plays a role in health-related outcomes, the decisions that individuals make about their lives, the goals that individuals develop for themselves, and how individuals interact with others.

The considerable attention that has been given to self-esteem is most likely due to the fact that self-esteem is believed to play a causal role in many important life outcomes.

What then is self-esteem?

Self-esteem as described by William James (1890) refers to the sense of positive self-regard that develops when individuals consistently meet or exceed the important goals in their lives.

Self-esteem is generally considered to be the evaluative aspect of self-knowledge that reflects the extent to which people like themselves and believe they are competent (Brown, 1998; Tafarodi & Swann, 1995).

Self-esteem is not necessarily accurate or inaccurate. Rather, high levels of self-esteem may be commensurate with an individual’s attributes and accomplishments or these feelings of self-worth may have little to do with any sort of objective appraisal of the individual. This is crucial because self-esteem is a reflection of a person's perception rather than reality.

Self-esteem is considered to be a relatively enduring characteristic that possesses both motivational and cognitive components (Kernis, 2003). Individuals tend to show a desire for high levels of self-esteem and engage in a variety of strategies to maintain or enhance their feelings of self-worth.

Research has shown that individuals with different levels of self-esteem tend to adopt different strategies to regulate their feelings of self-worth, such that those with high self-esteem are more likely to focus their efforts on further increasing their feelings of self-worth (i.e., self-enhancement), whereas those with low self-esteem are primarily concerned with not losing the limited self-esteem resources they already possess (i.e., self-protection).

In contrast to the self-enhancing tendencies exhibited by those with high self-esteem, individuals with low levels of self-esteem are more likely to employ self-protective strategies characterized by a reluctance to call attention to themselves, attempts to prevent their bad qualities from being noticed, and an aversion to risk. In essence, individuals with low self-esteem tend to behave in a manner that is generally cautious and conservative (Josephs, Larrick, Steele, & Nisbett, 1992).

It appears that individuals with low self-esteem are reluctant to risk failure or rejection unless doing so is absolutely necessary. In many ways, the risks taken by individuals with low self-esteem appear to have greater potential cost for them than for those with high self-esteem because those with low self-esteem lack the evaluative resources necessary to buffer themselves from the self-esteem threats that accompany negative experiences such as failure and rejection.

Importance of self-esteem

Self-esteem is often considered to be a fundamental human need. Consistent with this view, individuals show a clear preference for high levels of self-esteem under most conditions (Allport, 1955) and even prefer self-esteem boosts over other pleasant activities when given a choice (e.g., eating a favorite food, engaging in a favorite sexual activity; Bushman, Moeller, & Crocker, 2011).

Increases in self-esteem are often considered to be one of the most important elements of the most satisfying events in the lives of individuals. However, the underlying reasons for this desire to possess high levels of self-esteem have only recently become the subject of serious empirical attention. Two of the possible benefits associated with the possession of high self-esteem are that it may:

• be a means for transferring information between the individual and the social environment; and
• serve a protective function that buffers individuals from negative experiences (e.g., social rejection, achievement failure).

These potential functions of self-esteem will be reviewed in the following sections. It is important to note that this is by no means intended to be an exhaustive list of the benefits associated with the possession of high self-esteem. Rather, the goal is simply to review two of the commonly identified benefits that accompany high self-esteem.

Transfer of information between the individual and the social environment

One possible explanation for the desire to possess high self-esteem is that feelings of self-worth may play a role in transferring information concerning social status between the individual and the social environment. According to the sociometer model, developed by Leary et al., (1998), has a status-tracking property such that the feelings of self-worth possessed by an individual depend on the level of relational value that the individual believes s/he possesses.

This model argues that self-esteem is an evolutionary adaptation that allows individuals to monitor the degree to which they believe they are valued by others. In essence, the sociometer model suggests that self-esteem is analogous to a gauge that tracks gains in perceived relational value (accompanied by increases in self-esteem) as well as losses in perceived value (accompanied by decreases in self-esteem).

A variety of studies have shown that feelings of self-worth tend to change in accordance with the perception of social acceptance and rejection (Leary et al., 1995, 1998). However, it is important to note that recent meta-analysis found that even though individuals are likely to report an increase in self-esteem following social acceptance, they are unlikely to display any evidence of a significant decline in self-esteem following rejection (Blackhart, Nelson, Knowles, & Baumeiser, 2009).

This is a potentially important finding because it directly conflicts with one of the basic ideas underlying the sociometer model. That is, it has generally been accepted that individuals tend to experience decreases in their self-esteem when they experience social rejection.

Although the sociometer model has been extremely influential, it may provide only a partial representation of the way this information is transferred between the individual and the social environment. That is, status-tracking models of self-esteem have focused exclusively on the influence that perceived standing has on feelings of self-worth

The status-signaling model of self-esteem provides a complement to the sociometer model by addressing the possibility that self-esteem influences how individuals present themselves to others and alters how those individuals are perceived by their social environment.

According to this model, the feelings of self-worth possessed by individuals may influence how they are perceived by others such that those with higher levels of self-esteem will generally be evaluated more positively than those with lower levels of self-esteem. The existing data has supported this basic idea (Zeigler-Hill et al., in press; Zeigler-Hill & Myers, 2009, 2011).

Protective function of self-esteem

Another possible function of self-esteem is that it may serve as a resource that protects individuals from potential threats such as rejection or failure. That is, those with high self-esteem are thought to be less affected by negative experiences and to recover from these sorts of experiences more quickly than individuals with low self-esteem. This basic idea has been referred to using a variety of labels such as the stress-buffering model of high self-esteem and the vulnerability model of low self-esteem (Zeigler-Hill, 2011).

The underlying rationale of models that emphasize the protective properties of high self-esteem is that negative experiences may be less detrimental for individuals with high self-esteem because of their enhanced coping resources (Arndt & Goldenberg, 2002) and the certainty they have regarding their positive characteristics (Campbell et al., 1996).

In essence, the stress-buffering model proposes that self-esteem and stress will interact in such a way that high self-esteem protects individuals from the deleterious consequences of stress, whereas low self-esteem increases their vulnerability to the effects of stress. The stress-buffering model has received support from a large number of studies (e.g., Brown & Dutton, 1995).