Hey everyone! This week I'm talking
about self-esteem. Self-esteem involves an individual's total
positive and negative thoughts and opinions about the self
(Coopersmith, 1967). Furthermore, self-esteem fluctuates regularly in
response to events and experiences that happen to an individual such
as receiving a bad grade on a test, getting asked out on a date, or
scoring a goal in a soccer game (Heatherton & Polivy, 1991). As
we all know, people can vary in their levels of self-esteem with
high-esteem being associated with confidence, liking oneself, etc.
For an example of two individuals who likely posses high self-esteem
see the video below...
While I find this video very
entertaining, if you found it annoying or disheartening please see
the video at the end to help decompress.
Anyway, one theory as to why humans
need self-esteem was proposed by Leary and Baumister (2000). Leary
and Baumister (2000) proposed that self-esteem serves as an
indication of how we are doing socially and alerts us to when we need
to improve (as well as when we do a good job) due our behavior being
under the judgment of others. Therefore, it encourages us to feel bad
when we experience a negative social interaction and encourages us to
modify our behavior in order to gain the approval of others and makes
us feel good and behave in a similar manner when we do something that
improves our self-esteem (Leary & Baumister, 2000). This would
mean that self-esteem makes us more successful (ideally) by helping
us to recognize our strengths and weaknesses.
Now, because we know that as humans we
need self-esteem and that it serves a function for us (other than
just making us feel good) it also makes sense that we would try to
preserve it. This can be accomplished in multiple ways but one such
way is self-handicapping. Self-handicapping is essentially
when people give themselves an excuse or take actions to reduce their
performance due to an anticipated failure (Berglas & Jones,
1978). This makes sense because it gives individuals the ability to
blame something else (whatever the self-handicap is) for their
failure rather than a personal shortcoming or lack of ability.
I know that I especially used to take
advantage of this tactic when I was a first year. Upon getting back a
test and receiving a grade that was lower than I would have liked, I
would rationalize to myself that I am just taking so many courses
that I don't have time to adequately study for all my classes. Now
this was not true in the slightest as I still had plenty of free time
which I liked to use for nonacademic activities. Other times I would
complain that I had a headache at the time of the test or that I
stayed up late the night before studying and that my low sleep
impacted my performance. Of course, the root of the problem was my
study habits and not taking responsibility for my work and time
management. This pattern continued for my entire Fall semester and it
was the Spring semester when I managed to make some changes in my
behavior. Essentially I got much better about doing all of my regular
work and getting it done on time but before I was able to do that, I
was regularly self-handicapping in order to maintain my self-esteem
while doing poorly in some courses.
Word count: 530
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Berglas, S., & Jones, E. E. (1978). Drug choice as a self-handicapping strategy in response to noncontingent success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 405-417.
Coopersmith, S. (1967). The antecedents of self-esteem. San Francisco: Freeman.
Heatherton, T. F., & Polivy, J. (1991) Development and validation of a scale for measuring state self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 895-910.
Leary, M. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 32, 1-62.
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Berglas, S., & Jones, E. E. (1978). Drug choice as a self-handicapping strategy in response to noncontingent success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 405-417.
Coopersmith, S. (1967). The antecedents of self-esteem. San Francisco: Freeman.
Heatherton, T. F., & Polivy, J. (1991) Development and validation of a scale for measuring state self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 895-910.
Leary, M. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 32, 1-62.
Arghh, the internet hates me and didn’t save my first comment.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, yay Icona Pop! I agree that this music embodies self-esteem. It’s so great to dance too as well.
Okay, on the the “academic” portion of this comment. I too engaged in self-handicapping in my earlier years at Southwestern. I was a biochemistry major before I came to my senses that this was a terrible idea. I had many natural science classes, most in which I was barely scraping by. Around this same time, my mom was getting very ill. Although my mom being ill didn’t really have much effect on my ability to understand the different cellular processes and what not, I would reassure myself that my disappointing test grades were because I was stressed from my mom’s illness and wasn’t performing at my best.
My mom got better. My grades didn’t. I think I went through every excuse in the book to try to preserve my self-esteem. I wanted so desperately for the science to “click”. Eventually, I came to the realization that my aptitude in science was geared more toward the social sciences. I therefore parted ways with biochem and struck it up with a new love: psychology.
g0t s3lf est33m @ll up 1n d1S B1-@tch!!1
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