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How the self-esteem craze took over America (2017)

259 points by riyadparvez 6y ago

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
From the article: > The logic was simple: If low self-esteem is tied to so many maladaptive responses, to so many forms of underachievement and bad behavior, then surely raising kids’ (and other’s) self-esteem could bring with it untold benefits. It’s interesting to watch this same logic play out again in the software world under a new name. This time, we’re not increasing self-esteem, we’re attacking “impostor syndrome”. In both cases the underlying association between feelings of low self-esteem or impostor syndrome and underperformance can be very real. Correcting low self-esteem or impostor syndrome can provide very real benefits. I’m not suggesting that either condition isn’t real. However, in both cases the popular literature tends to assume that low self-esteem or imposter syndrome are conditions which occur independent of ability or skill level. Instead of teaching people how to teach themselves the skills they need and develop accurate and honest self-assessment techniques, we’ve skipped past the difficult work and simply tried to instill confidence in people. Imposter syndrome literature takes this a step further by implying that no one knows what they’re doing, that everyone is equally bad, and that there are no adults in the room. The goal isn’t just to lift people up, it’s to mentally bring everyone else down. In both cases the intentions are good, but the end results are mixed. Some times, being able to honestly self-evaluate and accept that one needs to make some improvements is more valuable than short-term soothing of the ego. Obviously it’s not good if people are paralyzed by imposter syndrome or feelings of perpetual inadequacy, but it’s also not good if we try to offset those feelings with arbitrary ego boosts and misleading ideas that everyone is equally incompetent. Instead, we should be giving people skills to accurately self-assess without tying current abilities to their self-worth. Trajectory is more important over the long term, but ironically some of the imposter syndrome literature tends to reduce learning trajectory by telling people that they already have all of the abilities they need to be successful. It’s a tricky situation. Interesting to read this article and see that it’s hardly a new issue in society.
- fcsp 6y ago
  > Imposter syndrome literature takes this a step further by implying that no one knows what they’re doing, that everyone is equally bad, and that there are no adults in the room Could you please provide an example book, I'd like to check that out. Thanks!
- Agreed99 6y ago
  It’s fun to see this “belief” in ephemeral framework being peddled again. “It’s tribal shaman rain dance that grows corn!” “It’s Jesus!” “It’s sound economics!” Real human logistics work one way. Stabilize a reality destroying itself. Semantic games about why and for whom are the outdated traditions. For the species, because it demands it is the only true answer. Happy to tear down industry designed by men who hold no true power. Just advantaged access in a social system where we can clearly watch them manipulate markets with handouts
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "Imposter syndrome literature takes this a step further by implying that no one knows what they’re doing, that everyone is equally bad, and that there are no adults in the room." This also breeds distrust of expertise and anti-intellectualism. After all, they've been taught that everybody's equally bad so those experts signaling that their skills/knowledge are not up to snuff are clearly doing so for ulterior motives such as "gatekeeping" or for their own financial or other gain.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I mean, there are no adults in the room. It just very few. That is definitely true. That was one of revelations I had as I got closer to rooms that make decisions. And the other part turned out to be true multiple times in my life. I thought how much better those people are and when I got close, they were good, but normally good and were clueless a lot.
  - konjin 6y ago
    Expertise is just experience. Which only applies in situations which you have seen before. Or put another way: that one is a good plumber does not mean one is a good heart surgeon. Yet for some reason we assume that is the case in intellectual pursuits because we don't see the stuff ideas are made of.
chiefalchemist 6y ago
It seems to me that self-esteem does have value. Telling yourself you're useless, stupid, etc. eventually becomes self-fulfilling. So why not try to maintain a positive self-view? That being said, what's seems to have gone wrong is how to build self-esteem. It's simply not a gift given to you by others, or even yourself. Instead, it's something that is earned. It's a muscle that when exercised develops depth and breadth over time. Put another way, you don't develop self-esteem by avoiding adversity; or canceling anything remotely uncomfortable. You build proper self-esteem by facing the darkness, not closing your eyes and pretending the lights are on. Self-esteem isn't something that's said, it's something you do. Like anything of value you have to put in the work, you have to put in the time. There are no shortcuts.
hliyan 6y ago
I always thought this started with Nathaniel Branden's work on self-esteem [1] in the late 60's parallel to Ayn Rand's work. The impact of both these individuals' ideas on the path America subsequently took is hard to accurately estimate, but it's probably not incorrect to say that it was significant. Both were fierce individualists and opposed anything that even smelled of collectivism on moral (rather than utilitarian) grounds. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Self-Esteem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Self-Esteem
- JasonFruit 6y ago
  It sounds to me as though Brandon's idea of self-esteem is a bit different than how most people think of it today. Rather than a nebulous, unsupported good feeling about oneself, his was closer to what we might think of as self-confidence supported by cultivated personal integrity. That's from someone who has read about his book but not read it, however.
  - texasbigdata 6y ago
    I read his book a few times and it’s very weird. His work is not the modern interpretation. It feels purer but also much less helpful. It won’t encourage you to start a get rich quick blog and sell memberships to others, for one.
xyzelement 6y ago
This is similar in theme to the article about frequent feedback that was posted here a few days ago. On some level there's a choice between experiencing and growing from your failures, or being shielded from recognizing failure in the first place. The second one "feels" better until someone comes along and eats you in your weakness. The thing I am curious about is how this will play out in America. Meaning will weak americans just fade away as the strong ones accumulate skills, wealth and family? Or is weakness so permitted that we will be taken over externally? The former will be a good cultural and physical rejuvenation for the republic. The second a disaster.
- hammock 6y ago
  Spent the week with my 20 months old niece and quickly taught her a new word: "almost." She used to say "uh oh" when she failed at a task, or would ask for help. Instead of praising her for at least trying the task, i would say "almost" and soon I saw her saying this to herself, and it seemed to encourage her to try again until she succeeded. I'm not a parent so I have no idea if this is good or not. But it strikes me that there is more to giving feedback than just quantity of it, or positive/negative. "Almost" introduces another dimension, and potentially activates a different set of motivating emotions as well.
  - stevesearer 6y ago
    I believe what you are describing would be part of what people call a growth mindset where there is not really a fixed point of completion. So a statement like, “Wow, you are good at reading!” might become “Wow, you are getting so much better at sounding out those really tricky words!”. The first statement is more self-esteem building where the second is more highlighting an area where growth has happened and can continue to happen. To me the first also feels quite lazy and anecdotally speaking from my kids, they really like when I actually pay attention and give feedback on specifics of what they are working on.
  - cbanek 6y ago
    I love this comment, and while I don't have kids, small kids seem to like me, and I seem to get along well with them. I love the using almost, and of course it's probably also a tone of voice and also showing attention. But I do the same thing with words, giving praise like "so close" or "try it again" with excitement. I also like framing things like games or adventures.
known 6y ago
I think its due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs2.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_N...
taxicabjesus 6y ago
Everybody has the potential to be 'somebody', but we all need help getting there. Some of my greatest successes as a taxi driver involved helping people with low self-esteem. Two of my passengers, whom I'm still in contact with, come to mind... One was quiet, and just provided directions. "Right, right, right, left (into a parking lot)..." Oh, we're going to the drive-through liquor store. After she bought her vodka and cigarettes she said to take her back to her apartment. "Do you have any food in your apartment?" Alcoholics are always malnourished. She did not, so I stopped the taxi meter and detoured to McDonald's. I called her back a few times, and detected a hint of hope in her voice: "someone cares about me". She found my card a few months later, and I learned more about her story. The state had tried to help her with her prescription-exacerbated drinking problem by sending her to minimum-security prison for 2 years (3rd DUI). She'd tried to stay sober upon release, but life happened and she still didn't know how to cope. After her taxi ride, she drunk-called her good friend, who called her youngest son with instructions: "GO SOBER UP YOUR MOTHER." I eventually told her daughter that her mother needed to feel safe to finish her recovery. She lived with that daughter for a while, then moved to a couch at her son's. Now she has a room at her son's house, and is doing quite well for herself. I got crucified trying to protect another passenger from do-gooders. She's doing well now, no thanks to the professionals who mis-categorized her as a hopeless drug addict. She found that she's good at something, and is developing her skills to help herself and others. On a submission about the 1% rule I commented: "We're all in our little alcoves of the human experience, trying the best we can to make the most of the situation we find ourselves in. For most of us, no matter how good we are at something, there are probably 100-million other people just as good as you. "The 1% rule reflects this reality: every snowflake is unique, but individual snowflakes are not special." [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22623162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22623162 Most people are not special snowflakes, but we never know which child will turn out to be someone significant, and who will turn out to be just regular someones. Everyone has the potential to be someone important to someone else. My former-alcoholic passenger (above) calls semi-regularly with updates about her family drama. She is now an asset ("grandma") to her family, rather than the hopeless drunk I took to the liquor store almost 8 years ago. She recently got her drivers license reinstated, contributes by watching her grandkids and (now) driving people around, and is appreciated by her family. I'm invited to her daughter's Christmas party in a few weeks. They're rather well-to-do, but I didn't know that when I took a few minutes out of my day to pay attention to my nobody-passenger. Very few of us will turn out to be special snowflakes, but everyone has the capacity to become someone significant to the other people in our lives. I think this is the true essence of what this submission calls the "self-esteem craze".
cbanek 6y ago
"‘Believe in yourself and anything is possible’? Nope, it’s just not true." This is such a great quote. I honestly hate people that spout nonsense like anything is possible if you just believe, and that if you don't, it's that you obviously don't believe enough. It's almost the same as the prosperity gospel nonsense. And later on in the article, talking about grit, I feel like this is the swing the other way. And now we're getting messages like "nothing is impossible if you work hard enough at it", which also shift the burden back to you. If you fail, it's not the world that's hard or unfair (it naturally is both), but again it's a personal failing on your part for not trying hard enough (or believing you are good enough). Everyday I see blog posts with the same kind of thing about how they have accomplished so much before most people have breakfast. Yet that seems to be mostly writing posts about how to get stuff done. Obviously many things in life are hard, and you have to believe that you can do them to put the hard effort in believing you can accomplish them. But leaning so hard one way or the other that you will get some magic power is the kind of nonsense people love to buy, and therefore sell.
- chris_wot 6y ago
  One of the definitions of possible is “that may exist or happen, but that is not certain or probable.” If you take this as the definition, I do think the saying is accurate. Unfortunately, too many people understand the saying as “believe in yourself and you will definitely succeed”. Look at it this way, if you don’t believe you can achieve some hard task, then you won’t start it on your own. If you do believe in yourself, you’ll almost certainly start the task. Whether you succeed is a different matter. But if you don’t start, you are guaranteed that you won’t succeed in that particular task.
  - cbanek 6y ago
    I agree with your later sentiment, and think I shared the same at the end of my comment. But sometimes people try to do something that is actually impossible. Like praying away cancer or medical problems, or believing they have magic powers. Sometimes believing you can do something that you can't (or will never happen) is a detriment. Now let's talk about the "not certain or probable" as I think this is more interesting ground. Sometimes you have to realize that you need to do something differently. If what you want to do isn't probable, then maybe you should look at the problem in a way that has more probable success. I struggle with this all the time at work, sometimes I feel like I'm right on the cusp of a breakthrough or bugfix, and other times it feels hopeless. But that doesn't always mean it is so. Sometimes knowing when to give up is important, as long as you start again. Or maybe you realize it wasn't that important after all, and you should just do something else. I could believe all I want I need to win the lottery. I could buy a ticket every day and it's not probable I will win, but it's not impossible. And you never know!
vlunkr 6y ago
I was thinking recently about how this term had disappeared at some point. It's a very interesting history, but I think some of the conclusions drawn are overly negative. - They’re all very individualistic, they’re all very self-focused, they’re also all delusional. ‘Believe in yourself and anything is possible’? Nope, it’s just not true. I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone literally believed that. You're not qualified to be CEO because you love yourself, but you're also unlikely to achieve anything with no confidence. It seems to me that we just talk about taking care of mental health instead now. Similar ideas, just a different angle.
- texasbigdata 6y ago
  Confidence is repeated domain specific success, the saying goes.
  - watwut 6y ago
    It is not necessary. Confidence issues are unrelated to actual success. Confidence makes big difference in initial willingness to try something new and in ability to persist after failure. People with low confidence don't try harder things and give up after failures. And in many areas, confidence brings success. Even in tech people judge you on confidence a lot, and other professions are even more subjective.
    - texasbigdata 6y ago
      Sure, however backing up a bit and going a bit pseudoscience, let’s think about it evolutionarily. If you’re a young confident fella who thinks he’s got a great lion fighting strategy but no experience you end up not existing. The lack of confidence is not a problem it’s a feature; it saves us in the long run against risks. I have zero proof that high confidence people are more or less (or the same) able or capable than the general population. But the point is deep down anyone “judging” you can eventually substantively evaluate your credentials/capability. It’s not a good long term strategy to be a high confidence shill / hype person. Probably better to work on being more technically competent. Now if you happen to have a personality issue / disorder that causes excess shyness, sure go fix that. But confidence in itself, imho, is an overhyped tactic in American life.
roflc0ptic 6y ago
Having adopted a lot of quasi Buddhist frames in recent years, I increasingly look in askance at the self esteem framework. A friend was going through a crisis of confidence in their professional life, and was basically saying, I think I’m not a good psychologist, and the fact that I “wasted” 10 years training for this makes me want to kill myself. Their buddhist teacher (In practice, a therapist, and also by education the teacher is literally a therapist) responded: so what if you’re not good at being a psychologist? What if it’s true? Isn’t it better to know? Being emotionally invested in our specialness/abilities/whatever is a trap, because we’re not special, we all have deep limitations in our capabilities. Whatever you’re the best at: there are people better than you. There are people who are probably better than you at every single thing you do. So what? Part of the Sunday chanting service: “let us overcome the inferiority complex, the superiority complex, and the equality complex.” None of which is to say we shouldn’t treat ourselves lovingly and with compassion. We definitely should, and it takes a lot of work and growth to do that, and pretending we’re not limited is a false solution.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "let us overcome the inferiority complex, the superiority complex, and the equality complex" This is a lot easier to do if we're alone on a desert island or in a cave on a mountain top. Even then, most of us have a lifetime of baggage to let go of, as we've been taught to idealize superachievers and geniuses, and despise underachievers and mediocrity from an early age. I'm reminded of the start of one of my favorite Hardcore History episodes -- the first of the Death Throes of the Republic series[1]: I want you to think back to the house you grew up in as a child. I want you to picture a room in that house that didn't exist. I want you to pretend it did, and the whole time you were a young child, growing up in to your adolescence and until you leave home you're aware of this room in the house. The room has faces on the wall, dead people's faces -- the faces of dead people who were related to you. The faces are made of wax, and they were made immediately upon death of the individual whose face it was. The wax was put on the face and, like a modern version of a wax museum, an accurate representation of your dead ancestor's dead face was made and was put on your wall connected by a painted line to his ancestor, your even earlier ancestor whose wax face made after death is also on the wall, and that is connected by another line to his ancestor whose wax mask is there as well. These may have been full color versions of these ancestors of yours and their names were there and from your very earliest childhood memory you're aware of this room, and you are aware of who these people are and you are aware of what they did. It's sort of freaky, though, isn't it? Now you know how Julius Caesar felt growing up. Now I remember being terrified by paintings -- completely innocuous paintings -- in my house when I was a child, and I know my children get freaked out at the slightest thing like that, but to Julius Caesar and people like him this "ancestor room" as it's sometimes called, had a profound effect on firing their ambition. The ancient historian Sallust said that the Romans described their children's spirits as blazing like flames when they would look at the sight. The ancient historian Polybius said, "It would be hard to imagine a more impressive scene for a youth who aspires to win fame and practice virtue." To these people who spent time amongst the Romans or who were Roman themselves, they thought this was a good way to create in your young people this desire for achievement which was the hallmark of Roman society during this time period... [1] - https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-death-throes-of-the-republic-series/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-death-thr...
bromquinn 6y ago
Self esteem is attacking the is-vs-ought problem. Sure, in the cold, social Darwin paradigm, those without ability have no worth - but this is not how things SHOULD be. I think it’s important for people to know that they have value, regardless of their abilities. This doesn’t mean that people should not be encouraged to succeed. I think self esteem and achievement can go hand in hand. For me personally, I think believing that I was special helped motivate me to achieve more! After all, If you’re not special, what chance do you have competing against the other 7billion people in the world? Anecdotally, I was raised by two very people-self esteem parents, and have become fairly successful compared to my peer group. I also remember the first time I heard someone say that self esteem was bad. It came from the evangelical, objectivist parents of a kid I knew in early high school. That kid ended up failing college and getting addicted to opioids.
oh_sigh 6y ago
My understanding was that self esteem is actually just the opposite of what it is usually purported - it is how you view how the rest of society views you and your role in it. If that is true, just telling someone "you're special" isn't enough - you actually have to be special and be recognized and respected for it. It's about as useful as telling a person "you're tall" regardless of their height.
CivBase 6y ago
Baumeister and his colleagues didn’t come down particularly hard on the psychologists and others who had contributed to the self-esteem craze. “Was it reasonable to start boosting self-esteem before all the data were in?” they wrote in one of the papers. “Perhaps. We recognize that many practitioners and applied psychologists must deal with problems before all the relevant research can be conducted.” This is, in fact, a common occurrence in social science: You have a handful of papers pointing to a correlation that could have important real-world ramifications, assuming certain things are true. But it takes a while to determine whether those certain other things are true, and in the meantime other people — people who might not be as committed to scientific rigor as the best social scientists are, or who are trying to solve urgent real-world problems and don’t have the luxury of waiting for more peer-reviewed evidence to come in — might decide to run with the idea before the evidence is in. That seems to be what happened here. Despite the absence of causal evidence linking self-esteem to positive outcomes, it was such an irresistible story that, from the point of view of excitable politicians like Vasconcellos, there was enough evidence to go ahead and run with it. And thus a simple, highly viral message — raising self-esteem can greatly improve people’s lives and productivity — was able to catch on because it offered a straightforward solution to a constellation of problems that are not, in fact, straightforward to solve. It felt like an easy fix because none of the nuance that should go into rigorous social science filtered down to policy makers themselves — many of those policy makers developed misconceptions about what, exactly, bona fide experts had and hadn’t discovered. “Social researchers have long told us that a lack of self-esteem underlies society’s most pressing problems,” wrote a Maryland House delegate in a 1989 letter to the editor which ran in the Washington Post, “the ones government shells out big dollars to alleviate.” She was wrong, of course, but it’s not hard to understand where she might have gotten the idea. The fact that self-esteem was such a bipartisan hit, with liberals and conservatives both supporting it in fairly high numbers (albeit couched in slightly different reasoning), also made it tougher for any unified opposition to the concept to develop — though there were certainly some (again, mostly ignored) skeptics along the way, among them conservative social commentators like Charles Krauthammer and “Dr. Laura” Schlessinger who saw the self-esteem movement as yet another manifestation of the saccharine mushy self-help drivel that was, in their view, undermining America. This right here seems to be the core problem. And the problem seems to be getting worse, leaking beyond the realms of the social sciences. The public seems to be relying more and more on science for guidance as our media and politicians keep failing us. But most people don't really understand what science is! You can defend anything with "science" if all you're looking for is some study that claims to show evidence for whatever it is you're defending. I'm not sure what the answer is. A massive education campaign to inform the public about how to interpret studies and draw conclusions that are actually supported by science? Higher standards for scientific publications regarding content and reproducibility? Regulations which would force media to disclose more information about the "studies" they cite?
friendlybus 6y ago
Beautiful website
Vaslo 6y ago
Who can dis Mr Rogers but did he contribute by telling me that I was special? What I have learned since then is that I am not, or at least not to anyone except a select few people in my life. I feel like the more I have felt this way the more successful I’ve been, because I know that most people aren’t really paying attention to me, and I can pursue what makes me happy in my personal and professional life.
- allenu 6y ago
  I think the message of Mister Rogers is that you are special and valuable just the way you are and not that your specialness means you can achieve anything. Perceived success or lack thereof is independent of a human being's innate value. To me, the message is not "you can do anything". Instead, it takes the element of success out of the equation. However, this attitude could help someone become successful as it removes the notion that one is inherently inferior and can help one feel that bouncing back when things go wrong is possible.
  - byecomputer 6y ago
    I agree; I also think saying, "I'm special (read: unique), and everyone else is too," isn't necessarily contradictory or incorrect. It doesn't make you better or more special (or unique) than other people, but it helps you realize that what works for others may not always work for you, and vice versa, and that's okay. It's important when dealing with others and oneself to remember that everyone's different, and different isn't bad.
- arrosenberg 6y ago
  IMO, Mr. Rogers message was "be yourself, regardless of circumstance". Self-esteem is more like "tell yourself you are great and powerful, regardless of circumstance".
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Reminds me of this: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-men-who-still-love-fight-club https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-men-w... I think a lot of kids grew up being told they're special, then grew up to realize they're not beautiful and unique snowflakes. "Flight Club" the book might have been a response to the self esteem movement, but the movie landed at the right time for kids who grew up being told they're special, but now feel ennui, to find it.
Invictus0 6y ago
This could use a (2019) tag.
momirlan 6y ago
Self-esteem is a good thing to have, lacking it is not. Every psychologist will tell you that. Making it an industry or government target is bad but inevitable. Let's move on
satisfaction 6y ago
Kind of related: Wussification of America: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/12/the-wussification-of-america/68652/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/12/the-wus...
Quanttek 6y ago
Ctrl+F "spirit level", "anxiety", "social status", "social evaluative threat" = 0 results I feel like you cannot really discuss the "self-esteem craze" without the larger underlying societal forces at play. When psychologists observe high self-esteem scores you roughly notice two categories of people: 1. a healthier kind linked to positive outcomes: it centers on a fairly well-founded sense of confidence, with a reasonably accurate view of one's strengths in different situations and an ability to recognize one’s weaknesses. 2. an unhealthy, insecure narcissism: it is primarily defensive and involved a denial of weaknesses, i.e. an internal attempt to talk oneself up and maintain a positive sense of oneself in the face of threats to self-esteem. At the same as we saw a rise in self-esteem scores, we see a surge in anxiety and depression. This apparent paradox is solved by considering that the second kind and the rise in anxiety are linked to an increase in social evaluative threat: threats which created the possibility for loss of social esteem. They are the main source of stress in experiments since they are closely linked to the primary sources of stress in modern society: low social status, lack of friends, and stress during one's early life. In short, our social status is closely linked to how we define our worth and how much we are valued. In our increasingly-mobile world where we do not have settled communities but are surrounded by strangers, our social status becomes even more important. The greater the social status differentials in our society, the bigger the potential social evaluative threat. Hence, greater inequality seems to heighten people’s social evaluation anxieties by increasing the importance of social status. And our society has only become more unequal. This is one of the reasons why higher social inequality among rich nations is so closely linked to a range of health and social problems and is uncorrelated to the average income among those rich nations. This is discussed much more cogently in The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.
DrNuke 6y ago
It’s good, healthy and all, but knowledge-intensive endeavors still need a bit more than self-esteem and can-do attitude?
lionhearted 6y ago
This brings to mind one of my favorite essays on good science. "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" by Peter Norvig — https://norvig.com/experiment-design.html https://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
mrfredward 6y ago
Funny to see it mentioned in the article: I remember my middle school English teacher coming back from a continuing education course and saying she would no longer grade us in red ink, because studies showed red ink felt more critical and hurt students' self-esteem, which in turn made them less receptive to learning. The data matches my intuition, as I've certainly seen the tendency to shut down in the face of criticism in myself, but I'm inclined to believe learning to cope with red ink is just as important a life skill as whatever we were learning in 7th grade English. Self-esteem is positive, but achieving it by shielding kids from criticism in order to maintain a fragile fiction of how perfect and special they are is harmful. It's the ones who have good self-esteem even after seeing their mistakes circled in red who are best prepared for life.
yason 6y ago
I seems to me that the thing with self-esteem is much like with money. Happy, confident people do have self-esteem but trying to increase self-esteem doesn't mean one becomes happy and confident - much like wealthy people have money but merely giving the same amount of money to someone doesn't make that person wealthy. Wealth, like happiness and confidence, comes from another place and money, like self-esteem, is just the signal of how it shows up.
spicymaki 6y ago
An overexaggerated sense of high self-esteem is a defining characteristic of American culture. It was here way before the 1980s. I would say the delusion has its roots from the Puritan Calvinist pilgrims who thought that God has a plan for you and its predestined. Of course this notion would get further warped to, if you just believe you can and put in the effort, you will. In the US we love this stuff. We feel we can just will things into happening. Through the sheer force of will problems will just get solved. Unfortunately this behavior comes at the expense of just dealing with the issues in meaningful ways. We just pick elected officials who make claims that they can just solve hard problems without evidence. We need to come to grips with the idea that success or failure is all really chance. You are no better than the beggar on the street; you just have more luck. You don't really deserve anything. We need to learn to be generous, virtuous and pay it forward so we need not rely on an inflated sense of self-esteem to get out of bed in the morning.
- username90 6y ago
  I wonder if this is why American students are much more reluctant to pick STEM degrees than other equivalent countries? Like, they can't handle any setbacks hurting their self-esteem so they pick a simpler major instead of pushing through. Like, "I didn't really fail that calculus class, I just didn't want to study it so I choose a business major instead!".
- finder83 6y ago
  The part you're missing of the Puritan (Calvinist) theology though is that we're all sinners deserving only of condemnation with nothing deserving or redeemable in ourselves, but God chose to show us mercy and redeem us anyway. Not all puritans were Calvinist but if you're mentioning predestination, it kind of bears to reason that that group were. I kind of get what you're saying...but if its based in Puritanism, it's probably a perverted form of it I actually attribute the origins to the New Age movement (rooted and perverted from Hinduism) and the power of positive thinking that resulted of it during the 70s. Essentially if you believe in something hard enough then it can become true
  - andrekandre 6y ago
redcaptrickster 6y ago
"‘Believe in yourself and anything is possible’? Nope, it’s just not true." Some things require an inherent talent. No matter how much I practice painting, I will never be good at it. I don't have a talent for it. Same goes for things like music and writing , evidenced by the sheer amount of crap music and books out there. Talent is not skill, and skill is not talent.
renjimen 6y ago
Different forms of individualism, be it self esteem promotion or perseverance promotion, are still individualism. It’s so rare to work in isolation in the real world, so why are collaboration, support and reliance not seen as more important?
hatmatrix 6y ago
I always thought self-esteem comes from a feeling of empowerment. The most we can do in this effort is do our best to match kids with their innate talents and help develop them. https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10144 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10144
ThinkBeat 6y ago
"Failure is not an option". I have heard that from so many bosses at various levels. Make me want to face palm every time. Of course it is an option. Might even be the most likely outcome. It does not inspire me work harder at all. If failure really is not an option then the outcome is set no matter what I do.
a4444f 6y ago
How the "How the self-esteem craze took over America" craze took over HN. "Number Six: Where am I? Number Two (not identified as yet): In the village. Six: What do you want? Two: Information. Six: Whose side are you on? Two: That would be telling. We want information...information... information!!! Six: You won't get it! Two: By hook or by crook, we will. Six: Who are you? Two: The new Number Two. Six: Who is Number One? Two: You are Number Six. Six (running on the Village's beach): I am not a number; I am a free man!!! Two: [Laughter]"
alexashka 6y ago
Is it a craze? Or is it fashion? Today it's jeans with cuts on the knees, tomorrow it's polkadots. Yesterday it was self esteem, today it is he/him, she/her. I like trends. I enjoy fashion. There are many trends to choose from. Delightful. Self esteem was innocuous light reading that soothed my teenage and young adult anxiety. I found it beneficial at the time.
rasengan0 6y ago
Extra shiny stars if you know the 300 million USD secret... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(2006_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(2006_film) Koosh! you're special!
deleted 6y ago
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binarycodedhex 6y ago
It seems to me that the self-esteem movement enlarged egos and arrogance rather than self-reliance or resilience, and so these sort of individuals tend to grow up to be selfish, haughty, entitled people who collapse under any sort of real challenge.
auganov 6y ago
Not sure what's the point of attacking self-esteem as a general concept. Perhaps there's some valid criticism of policies aimed at boosting it. But the article is trying to convince us we shouldn't want to feel good about ourselves because a random study here and there didn't show a desirable correlation. If a study shows happiness doesn't make you rich should you stop being happy? It's a story of how most psychological research struggles with major epistemological issues.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
You can never win the lottery if you don’t play.
ztjio 6y ago
Self esteem isn't confidence. A lot of this seems to be borne out of the misunderstanding of what self esteem actually is. I remember this whole craze, I grew up in the thick of it. One thing the "preachers" utterly failed at is understanding and thus communicating what it even means to have self esteem. Then one day I came across this most profoundly enlightening article about a commentary on self esteem by the one and only Bruce Lee https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/12/18/bruce-lee-artist-of-life-self-esteem/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/12/18/bruce-lee-artist-of... What does it mean to hold someone else in high esteem? One could argue it means you respect their opinion or their actions, and then they can serve as a role model, a source of validation. So therefore self esteem is the critical ability to derive validation in your actions from your self. Self esteem is NOT just believing you can do something or be great or whatever. That's confidence. That's got nothing to do with self esteem at all. What self esteem comes down to is deriving direction, right from wrong, validation, etc. from one's self. This is so important, because, if you derive validation through pride in reflection of others then you become a slave to those others. This is what self esteem is about and why it's so critical. The craze lost the view. But the core message is still true today. Lee also recognizes the challenge in cultivating self esteem, that it requires constant effort. It's not simply about "believing it so therefore it's true" like so many self esteem preachers would have had you believe during the craze. It's a challenge and it's an ongoing effort, like any other kind of hygiene. It's common to suggest people think for themselves. This is impossible without cultivated self-esteem. I would argue that a huge number of people today suffer due to a lack of self esteem. The personality cults that we see destroying society today can arguably be enabled by looking to others for validation instead ourselves. It's a drug. It's far too easy to find outside validation now. Self esteem is enabling, yes, but it's also grounding. It's too easy to believe lies if you fail to ground your validation of action and thought in something more constant than the fleeting voices of strangers on the internet. TL; DR: Self esteem is not about confidence in your abilities (or the idea you can do something because you believe you can), it's about recognizing yourself as a legitimate (perhaps the most legitimate) source of validation of your actions and choices instead of deriving validation only from others and thus self-esteem is how you avoid becoming a slave to the judgement of others. It requires constant maintenance. The "craze" definitely failed to understand and communicate this.

259 points by riyadparvez 6y ago

From the article: > The logic was simple: If low self-esteem is tied to so many maladaptive responses, to so many forms of underachievement and bad behavior, then surely raising kids’ (and other’s) self-esteem could bring with it untold benefits. It’s interesting to watch this same logic play out again in the software world under a new name. This time, we’re not increasing self-esteem, we’re attacking “impostor syndrome”. In both cases the underlying association between feelings of low self-esteem or impostor syndrome and underperformance can be very real. Correcting low self-esteem or impostor syndrome can provide very real benefits. I’m not suggesting that either condition isn’t real. However, in both cases the popular literature tends to assume that low self-esteem or imposter syndrome are conditions which occur independent of ability or skill level. Instead of teaching people how to teach themselves the skills they need and develop accurate and honest self-assessment techniques, we’ve skipped past the difficult work and simply tried to instill confidence in people. Imposter syndrome literature takes this a step further by implying that no one knows what they’re doing, that everyone is equally bad, and that there are no adults in the room. The goal isn’t just to lift people up, it’s to mentally bring everyone else down. In both cases the intentions are good, but the end results are mixed. Some times, being able to honestly self-evaluate and accept that one needs to make some improvements is more valuable than short-term soothing of the ego. Obviously it’s not good if people are paralyzed by imposter syndrome or feelings of perpetual inadequacy, but it’s also not good if we try to offset those feelings with arbitrary ego boosts and misleading ideas that everyone is equally incompetent. Instead, we should be giving people skills to accurately self-assess without tying current abilities to their self-worth. Trajectory is more important over the long term, but ironically some of the imposter syndrome literature tends to reduce learning trajectory by telling people that they already have all of the abilities they need to be successful. It’s a tricky situation. Interesting to read this article and see that it’s hardly a new issue in society.

fcsp 6y ago
> Imposter syndrome literature takes this a step further by implying that no one knows what they’re doing, that everyone is equally bad, and that there are no adults in the room Could you please provide an example book, I'd like to check that out. Thanks!
Agreed99 6y ago
It’s fun to see this “belief” in ephemeral framework being peddled again. “It’s tribal shaman rain dance that grows corn!” “It’s Jesus!” “It’s sound economics!” Real human logistics work one way. Stabilize a reality destroying itself. Semantic games about why and for whom are the outdated traditions. For the species, because it demands it is the only true answer. Happy to tear down industry designed by men who hold no true power. Just advantaged access in a social system where we can clearly watch them manipulate markets with handouts
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "Imposter syndrome literature takes this a step further by implying that no one knows what they’re doing, that everyone is equally bad, and that there are no adults in the room." This also breeds distrust of expertise and anti-intellectualism. After all, they've been taught that everybody's equally bad so those experts signaling that their skills/knowledge are not up to snuff are clearly doing so for ulterior motives such as "gatekeeping" or for their own financial or other gain.
- watwut 6y ago
  I mean, there are no adults in the room. It just very few. That is definitely true. That was one of revelations I had as I got closer to rooms that make decisions. And the other part turned out to be true multiple times in my life. I thought how much better those people are and when I got close, they were good, but normally good and were clueless a lot.
- konjin 6y ago
  Expertise is just experience. Which only applies in situations which you have seen before. Or put another way: that one is a good plumber does not mean one is a good heart surgeon. Yet for some reason we assume that is the case in intellectual pursuits because we don't see the stuff ideas are made of.

chiefalchemist 6y ago

It seems to me that self-esteem does have value. Telling yourself you're useless, stupid, etc. eventually becomes self-fulfilling. So why not try to maintain a positive self-view? That being said, what's seems to have gone wrong is how to build self-esteem. It's simply not a gift given to you by others, or even yourself. Instead, it's something that is earned. It's a muscle that when exercised develops depth and breadth over time. Put another way, you don't develop self-esteem by avoiding adversity; or canceling anything remotely uncomfortable. You build proper self-esteem by facing the darkness, not closing your eyes and pretending the lights are on. Self-esteem isn't something that's said, it's something you do. Like anything of value you have to put in the work, you have to put in the time. There are no shortcuts.

hliyan 6y ago

I always thought this started with Nathaniel Branden's work on self-esteem [1] in the late 60's parallel to Ayn Rand's work. The impact of both these individuals' ideas on the path America subsequently took is hard to accurately estimate, but it's probably not incorrect to say that it was significant. Both were fierce individualists and opposed anything that even smelled of collectivism on moral (rather than utilitarian) grounds. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Self-Esteem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psychology_of_Self-Esteem

JasonFruit 6y ago
It sounds to me as though Brandon's idea of self-esteem is a bit different than how most people think of it today. Rather than a nebulous, unsupported good feeling about oneself, his was closer to what we might think of as self-confidence supported by cultivated personal integrity. That's from someone who has read about his book but not read it, however.
- texasbigdata 6y ago
  I read his book a few times and it’s very weird. His work is not the modern interpretation. It feels purer but also much less helpful. It won’t encourage you to start a get rich quick blog and sell memberships to others, for one.

xyzelement 6y ago

This is similar in theme to the article about frequent feedback that was posted here a few days ago. On some level there's a choice between experiencing and growing from your failures, or being shielded from recognizing failure in the first place. The second one "feels" better until someone comes along and eats you in your weakness. The thing I am curious about is how this will play out in America. Meaning will weak americans just fade away as the strong ones accumulate skills, wealth and family? Or is weakness so permitted that we will be taken over externally? The former will be a good cultural and physical rejuvenation for the republic. The second a disaster.

hammock 6y ago
Spent the week with my 20 months old niece and quickly taught her a new word: "almost." She used to say "uh oh" when she failed at a task, or would ask for help. Instead of praising her for at least trying the task, i would say "almost" and soon I saw her saying this to herself, and it seemed to encourage her to try again until she succeeded. I'm not a parent so I have no idea if this is good or not. But it strikes me that there is more to giving feedback than just quantity of it, or positive/negative. "Almost" introduces another dimension, and potentially activates a different set of motivating emotions as well.
- stevesearer 6y ago
  I believe what you are describing would be part of what people call a growth mindset where there is not really a fixed point of completion. So a statement like, “Wow, you are good at reading!” might become “Wow, you are getting so much better at sounding out those really tricky words!”. The first statement is more self-esteem building where the second is more highlighting an area where growth has happened and can continue to happen. To me the first also feels quite lazy and anecdotally speaking from my kids, they really like when I actually pay attention and give feedback on specifics of what they are working on.
- cbanek 6y ago
  I love this comment, and while I don't have kids, small kids seem to like me, and I seem to get along well with them. I love the using almost, and of course it's probably also a tone of voice and also showing attention. But I do the same thing with words, giving praise like "so close" or "try it again" with excitement. I also like framing things like games or adventures.

known 6y ago

I think its due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs2.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_N...

taxicabjesus 6y ago

Everybody has the potential to be 'somebody', but we all need help getting there. Some of my greatest successes as a taxi driver involved helping people with low self-esteem. Two of my passengers, whom I'm still in contact with, come to mind... One was quiet, and just provided directions. "Right, right, right, left (into a parking lot)..." Oh, we're going to the drive-through liquor store. After she bought her vodka and cigarettes she said to take her back to her apartment. "Do you have any food in your apartment?" Alcoholics are always malnourished. She did not, so I stopped the taxi meter and detoured to McDonald's. I called her back a few times, and detected a hint of hope in her voice: "someone cares about me". She found my card a few months later, and I learned more about her story. The state had tried to help her with her prescription-exacerbated drinking problem by sending her to minimum-security prison for 2 years (3rd DUI). She'd tried to stay sober upon release, but life happened and she still didn't know how to cope. After her taxi ride, she drunk-called her good friend, who called her youngest son with instructions: "GO SOBER UP YOUR MOTHER." I eventually told her daughter that her mother needed to feel safe to finish her recovery. She lived with that daughter for a while, then moved to a couch at her son's. Now she has a room at her son's house, and is doing quite well for herself. I got crucified trying to protect another passenger from do-gooders. She's doing well now, no thanks to the professionals who mis-categorized her as a hopeless drug addict. She found that she's good at something, and is developing her skills to help herself and others. On a submission about the 1% rule I commented: "We're all in our little alcoves of the human experience, trying the best we can to make the most of the situation we find ourselves in. For most of us, no matter how good we are at something, there are probably 100-million other people just as good as you. "The 1% rule reflects this reality: every snowflake is unique, but individual snowflakes are not special." [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22623162 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22623162 Most people are not special snowflakes, but we never know which child will turn out to be someone significant, and who will turn out to be just regular someones. Everyone has the potential to be someone important to someone else. My former-alcoholic passenger (above) calls semi-regularly with updates about her family drama. She is now an asset ("grandma") to her family, rather than the hopeless drunk I took to the liquor store almost 8 years ago. She recently got her drivers license reinstated, contributes by watching her grandkids and (now) driving people around, and is appreciated by her family. I'm invited to her daughter's Christmas party in a few weeks. They're rather well-to-do, but I didn't know that when I took a few minutes out of my day to pay attention to my nobody-passenger. Very few of us will turn out to be special snowflakes, but everyone has the capacity to become someone significant to the other people in our lives. I think this is the true essence of what this submission calls the "self-esteem craze".

cbanek 6y ago

"‘Believe in yourself and anything is possible’? Nope, it’s just not true." This is such a great quote. I honestly hate people that spout nonsense like anything is possible if you just believe, and that if you don't, it's that you obviously don't believe enough. It's almost the same as the prosperity gospel nonsense. And later on in the article, talking about grit, I feel like this is the swing the other way. And now we're getting messages like "nothing is impossible if you work hard enough at it", which also shift the burden back to you. If you fail, it's not the world that's hard or unfair (it naturally is both), but again it's a personal failing on your part for not trying hard enough (or believing you are good enough). Everyday I see blog posts with the same kind of thing about how they have accomplished so much before most people have breakfast. Yet that seems to be mostly writing posts about how to get stuff done. Obviously many things in life are hard, and you have to believe that you can do them to put the hard effort in believing you can accomplish them. But leaning so hard one way or the other that you will get some magic power is the kind of nonsense people love to buy, and therefore sell.

chris_wot 6y ago
One of the definitions of possible is “that may exist or happen, but that is not certain or probable.” If you take this as the definition, I do think the saying is accurate. Unfortunately, too many people understand the saying as “believe in yourself and you will definitely succeed”. Look at it this way, if you don’t believe you can achieve some hard task, then you won’t start it on your own. If you do believe in yourself, you’ll almost certainly start the task. Whether you succeed is a different matter. But if you don’t start, you are guaranteed that you won’t succeed in that particular task.
- cbanek 6y ago
  I agree with your later sentiment, and think I shared the same at the end of my comment. But sometimes people try to do something that is actually impossible. Like praying away cancer or medical problems, or believing they have magic powers. Sometimes believing you can do something that you can't (or will never happen) is a detriment. Now let's talk about the "not certain or probable" as I think this is more interesting ground. Sometimes you have to realize that you need to do something differently. If what you want to do isn't probable, then maybe you should look at the problem in a way that has more probable success. I struggle with this all the time at work, sometimes I feel like I'm right on the cusp of a breakthrough or bugfix, and other times it feels hopeless. But that doesn't always mean it is so. Sometimes knowing when to give up is important, as long as you start again. Or maybe you realize it wasn't that important after all, and you should just do something else. I could believe all I want I need to win the lottery. I could buy a ticket every day and it's not probable I will win, but it's not impossible. And you never know!

vlunkr 6y ago

I was thinking recently about how this term had disappeared at some point. It's a very interesting history, but I think some of the conclusions drawn are overly negative. - They’re all very individualistic, they’re all very self-focused, they’re also all delusional. ‘Believe in yourself and anything is possible’? Nope, it’s just not true. I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone literally believed that. You're not qualified to be CEO because you love yourself, but you're also unlikely to achieve anything with no confidence. It seems to me that we just talk about taking care of mental health instead now. Similar ideas, just a different angle.

texasbigdata 6y ago
Confidence is repeated domain specific success, the saying goes.
- watwut 6y ago
  It is not necessary. Confidence issues are unrelated to actual success. Confidence makes big difference in initial willingness to try something new and in ability to persist after failure. People with low confidence don't try harder things and give up after failures. And in many areas, confidence brings success. Even in tech people judge you on confidence a lot, and other professions are even more subjective.
  - texasbigdata 6y ago
    Sure, however backing up a bit and going a bit pseudoscience, let’s think about it evolutionarily. If you’re a young confident fella who thinks he’s got a great lion fighting strategy but no experience you end up not existing. The lack of confidence is not a problem it’s a feature; it saves us in the long run against risks. I have zero proof that high confidence people are more or less (or the same) able or capable than the general population. But the point is deep down anyone “judging” you can eventually substantively evaluate your credentials/capability. It’s not a good long term strategy to be a high confidence shill / hype person. Probably better to work on being more technically competent. Now if you happen to have a personality issue / disorder that causes excess shyness, sure go fix that. But confidence in itself, imho, is an overhyped tactic in American life.

roflc0ptic 6y ago

Having adopted a lot of quasi Buddhist frames in recent years, I increasingly look in askance at the self esteem framework. A friend was going through a crisis of confidence in their professional life, and was basically saying, I think I’m not a good psychologist, and the fact that I “wasted” 10 years training for this makes me want to kill myself. Their buddhist teacher (In practice, a therapist, and also by education the teacher is literally a therapist) responded: so what if you’re not good at being a psychologist? What if it’s true? Isn’t it better to know? Being emotionally invested in our specialness/abilities/whatever is a trap, because we’re not special, we all have deep limitations in our capabilities. Whatever you’re the best at: there are people better than you. There are people who are probably better than you at every single thing you do. So what? Part of the Sunday chanting service: “let us overcome the inferiority complex, the superiority complex, and the equality complex.” None of which is to say we shouldn’t treat ourselves lovingly and with compassion. We definitely should, and it takes a lot of work and growth to do that, and pretending we’re not limited is a false solution.

pmoriarty 6y ago
"let us overcome the inferiority complex, the superiority complex, and the equality complex" This is a lot easier to do if we're alone on a desert island or in a cave on a mountain top. Even then, most of us have a lifetime of baggage to let go of, as we've been taught to idealize superachievers and geniuses, and despise underachievers and mediocrity from an early age. I'm reminded of the start of one of my favorite Hardcore History episodes -- the first of the Death Throes of the Republic series[1]: I want you to think back to the house you grew up in as a child. I want you to picture a room in that house that didn't exist. I want you to pretend it did, and the whole time you were a young child, growing up in to your adolescence and until you leave home you're aware of this room in the house. The room has faces on the wall, dead people's faces -- the faces of dead people who were related to you. The faces are made of wax, and they were made immediately upon death of the individual whose face it was. The wax was put on the face and, like a modern version of a wax museum, an accurate representation of your dead ancestor's dead face was made and was put on your wall connected by a painted line to his ancestor, your even earlier ancestor whose wax face made after death is also on the wall, and that is connected by another line to his ancestor whose wax mask is there as well. These may have been full color versions of these ancestors of yours and their names were there and from your very earliest childhood memory you're aware of this room, and you are aware of who these people are and you are aware of what they did. It's sort of freaky, though, isn't it? Now you know how Julius Caesar felt growing up. Now I remember being terrified by paintings -- completely innocuous paintings -- in my house when I was a child, and I know my children get freaked out at the slightest thing like that, but to Julius Caesar and people like him this "ancestor room" as it's sometimes called, had a profound effect on firing their ambition. The ancient historian Sallust said that the Romans described their children's spirits as blazing like flames when they would look at the sight. The ancient historian Polybius said, "It would be hard to imagine a more impressive scene for a youth who aspires to win fame and practice virtue." To these people who spent time amongst the Romans or who were Roman themselves, they thought this was a good way to create in your young people this desire for achievement which was the hallmark of Roman society during this time period... [1] - https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-death-throes-of-the-republic-series/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-death-thr...

bromquinn 6y ago

Self esteem is attacking the is-vs-ought problem. Sure, in the cold, social Darwin paradigm, those without ability have no worth - but this is not how things SHOULD be. I think it’s important for people to know that they have value, regardless of their abilities. This doesn’t mean that people should not be encouraged to succeed. I think self esteem and achievement can go hand in hand. For me personally, I think believing that I was special helped motivate me to achieve more! After all, If you’re not special, what chance do you have competing against the other 7billion people in the world? Anecdotally, I was raised by two very people-self esteem parents, and have become fairly successful compared to my peer group. I also remember the first time I heard someone say that self esteem was bad. It came from the evangelical, objectivist parents of a kid I knew in early high school. That kid ended up failing college and getting addicted to opioids.

oh_sigh 6y ago

My understanding was that self esteem is actually just the opposite of what it is usually purported - it is how you view how the rest of society views you and your role in it. If that is true, just telling someone "you're special" isn't enough - you actually have to be special and be recognized and respected for it. It's about as useful as telling a person "you're tall" regardless of their height.

CivBase 6y ago

Baumeister and his colleagues didn’t come down particularly hard on the psychologists and others who had contributed to the self-esteem craze. “Was it reasonable to start boosting self-esteem before all the data were in?” they wrote in one of the papers. “Perhaps. We recognize that many practitioners and applied psychologists must deal with problems before all the relevant research can be conducted.” This is, in fact, a common occurrence in social science: You have a handful of papers pointing to a correlation that could have important real-world ramifications, assuming certain things are true. But it takes a while to determine whether those certain other things are true, and in the meantime other people — people who might not be as committed to scientific rigor as the best social scientists are, or who are trying to solve urgent real-world problems and don’t have the luxury of waiting for more peer-reviewed evidence to come in — might decide to run with the idea before the evidence is in. That seems to be what happened here. Despite the absence of causal evidence linking self-esteem to positive outcomes, it was such an irresistible story that, from the point of view of excitable politicians like Vasconcellos, there was enough evidence to go ahead and run with it. And thus a simple, highly viral message — raising self-esteem can greatly improve people’s lives and productivity — was able to catch on because it offered a straightforward solution to a constellation of problems that are not, in fact, straightforward to solve. It felt like an easy fix because none of the nuance that should go into rigorous social science filtered down to policy makers themselves — many of those policy makers developed misconceptions about what, exactly, bona fide experts had and hadn’t discovered. “Social researchers have long told us that a lack of self-esteem underlies society’s most pressing problems,” wrote a Maryland House delegate in a 1989 letter to the editor which ran in the Washington Post, “the ones government shells out big dollars to alleviate.” She was wrong, of course, but it’s not hard to understand where she might have gotten the idea. The fact that self-esteem was such a bipartisan hit, with liberals and conservatives both supporting it in fairly high numbers (albeit couched in slightly different reasoning), also made it tougher for any unified opposition to the concept to develop — though there were certainly some (again, mostly ignored) skeptics along the way, among them conservative social commentators like Charles Krauthammer and “Dr. Laura” Schlessinger who saw the self-esteem movement as yet another manifestation of the saccharine mushy self-help drivel that was, in their view, undermining America. This right here seems to be the core problem. And the problem seems to be getting worse, leaking beyond the realms of the social sciences. The public seems to be relying more and more on science for guidance as our media and politicians keep failing us. But most people don't really understand what science is! You can defend anything with "science" if all you're looking for is some study that claims to show evidence for whatever it is you're defending. I'm not sure what the answer is. A massive education campaign to inform the public about how to interpret studies and draw conclusions that are actually supported by science? Higher standards for scientific publications regarding content and reproducibility? Regulations which would force media to disclose more information about the "studies" they cite?

friendlybus 6y ago

Beautiful website

Vaslo 6y ago

Who can dis Mr Rogers but did he contribute by telling me that I was special? What I have learned since then is that I am not, or at least not to anyone except a select few people in my life. I feel like the more I have felt this way the more successful I’ve been, because I know that most people aren’t really paying attention to me, and I can pursue what makes me happy in my personal and professional life.

allenu 6y ago
I think the message of Mister Rogers is that you are special and valuable just the way you are and not that your specialness means you can achieve anything. Perceived success or lack thereof is independent of a human being's innate value. To me, the message is not "you can do anything". Instead, it takes the element of success out of the equation. However, this attitude could help someone become successful as it removes the notion that one is inherently inferior and can help one feel that bouncing back when things go wrong is possible.
- byecomputer 6y ago
  I agree; I also think saying, "I'm special (read: unique), and everyone else is too," isn't necessarily contradictory or incorrect. It doesn't make you better or more special (or unique) than other people, but it helps you realize that what works for others may not always work for you, and vice versa, and that's okay. It's important when dealing with others and oneself to remember that everyone's different, and different isn't bad.
arrosenberg 6y ago
IMO, Mr. Rogers message was "be yourself, regardless of circumstance". Self-esteem is more like "tell yourself you are great and powerful, regardless of circumstance".
dehrmann 6y ago
Reminds me of this: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-men-who-still-love-fight-club https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-men-w... I think a lot of kids grew up being told they're special, then grew up to realize they're not beautiful and unique snowflakes. "Flight Club" the book might have been a response to the self esteem movement, but the movie landed at the right time for kids who grew up being told they're special, but now feel ennui, to find it.

Invictus0 6y ago

This could use a (2019) tag.

momirlan 6y ago

Self-esteem is a good thing to have, lacking it is not. Every psychologist will tell you that. Making it an industry or government target is bad but inevitable. Let's move on

satisfaction 6y ago

Kind of related: Wussification of America: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/12/the-wussification-of-america/68652/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/12/the-wus...

Quanttek 6y ago

Ctrl+F "spirit level", "anxiety", "social status", "social evaluative threat" = 0 results I feel like you cannot really discuss the "self-esteem craze" without the larger underlying societal forces at play. When psychologists observe high self-esteem scores you roughly notice two categories of people: 1. a healthier kind linked to positive outcomes: it centers on a fairly well-founded sense of confidence, with a reasonably accurate view of one's strengths in different situations and an ability to recognize one’s weaknesses. 2. an unhealthy, insecure narcissism: it is primarily defensive and involved a denial of weaknesses, i.e. an internal attempt to talk oneself up and maintain a positive sense of oneself in the face of threats to self-esteem. At the same as we saw a rise in self-esteem scores, we see a surge in anxiety and depression. This apparent paradox is solved by considering that the second kind and the rise in anxiety are linked to an increase in social evaluative threat: threats which created the possibility for loss of social esteem. They are the main source of stress in experiments since they are closely linked to the primary sources of stress in modern society: low social status, lack of friends, and stress during one's early life. In short, our social status is closely linked to how we define our worth and how much we are valued. In our increasingly-mobile world where we do not have settled communities but are surrounded by strangers, our social status becomes even more important. The greater the social status differentials in our society, the bigger the potential social evaluative threat. Hence, greater inequality seems to heighten people’s social evaluation anxieties by increasing the importance of social status. And our society has only become more unequal. This is one of the reasons why higher social inequality among rich nations is so closely linked to a range of health and social problems and is uncorrelated to the average income among those rich nations. This is discussed much more cogently in The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

DrNuke 6y ago

It’s good, healthy and all, but knowledge-intensive endeavors still need a bit more than self-esteem and can-do attitude?

lionhearted 6y ago

This brings to mind one of my favorite essays on good science. "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" by Peter Norvig — https://norvig.com/experiment-design.html https://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

mrfredward 6y ago

Funny to see it mentioned in the article: I remember my middle school English teacher coming back from a continuing education course and saying she would no longer grade us in red ink, because studies showed red ink felt more critical and hurt students' self-esteem, which in turn made them less receptive to learning. The data matches my intuition, as I've certainly seen the tendency to shut down in the face of criticism in myself, but I'm inclined to believe learning to cope with red ink is just as important a life skill as whatever we were learning in 7th grade English. Self-esteem is positive, but achieving it by shielding kids from criticism in order to maintain a fragile fiction of how perfect and special they are is harmful. It's the ones who have good self-esteem even after seeing their mistakes circled in red who are best prepared for life.

yason 6y ago

I seems to me that the thing with self-esteem is much like with money. Happy, confident people do have self-esteem but trying to increase self-esteem doesn't mean one becomes happy and confident - much like wealthy people have money but merely giving the same amount of money to someone doesn't make that person wealthy. Wealth, like happiness and confidence, comes from another place and money, like self-esteem, is just the signal of how it shows up.

spicymaki 6y ago

An overexaggerated sense of high self-esteem is a defining characteristic of American culture. It was here way before the 1980s. I would say the delusion has its roots from the Puritan Calvinist pilgrims who thought that God has a plan for you and its predestined. Of course this notion would get further warped to, if you just believe you can and put in the effort, you will. In the US we love this stuff. We feel we can just will things into happening. Through the sheer force of will problems will just get solved. Unfortunately this behavior comes at the expense of just dealing with the issues in meaningful ways. We just pick elected officials who make claims that they can just solve hard problems without evidence. We need to come to grips with the idea that success or failure is all really chance. You are no better than the beggar on the street; you just have more luck. You don't really deserve anything. We need to learn to be generous, virtuous and pay it forward so we need not rely on an inflated sense of self-esteem to get out of bed in the morning.

username90 6y ago
I wonder if this is why American students are much more reluctant to pick STEM degrees than other equivalent countries? Like, they can't handle any setbacks hurting their self-esteem so they pick a simpler major instead of pushing through. Like, "I didn't really fail that calculus class, I just didn't want to study it so I choose a business major instead!".
finder83 6y ago
The part you're missing of the Puritan (Calvinist) theology though is that we're all sinners deserving only of condemnation with nothing deserving or redeemable in ourselves, but God chose to show us mercy and redeem us anyway. Not all puritans were Calvinist but if you're mentioning predestination, it kind of bears to reason that that group were. I kind of get what you're saying...but if its based in Puritanism, it's probably a perverted form of it I actually attribute the origins to the New Age movement (rooted and perverted from Hinduism) and the power of positive thinking that resulted of it during the 70s. Essentially if you believe in something hard enough then it can become true
- andrekandre 6y ago

redcaptrickster 6y ago

"‘Believe in yourself and anything is possible’? Nope, it’s just not true." Some things require an inherent talent. No matter how much I practice painting, I will never be good at it. I don't have a talent for it. Same goes for things like music and writing , evidenced by the sheer amount of crap music and books out there. Talent is not skill, and skill is not talent.

renjimen 6y ago

Different forms of individualism, be it self esteem promotion or perseverance promotion, are still individualism. It’s so rare to work in isolation in the real world, so why are collaboration, support and reliance not seen as more important?

hatmatrix 6y ago

I always thought self-esteem comes from a feeling of empowerment. The most we can do in this effort is do our best to match kids with their innate talents and help develop them. https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10144 https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10144

ThinkBeat 6y ago

"Failure is not an option". I have heard that from so many bosses at various levels. Make me want to face palm every time. Of course it is an option. Might even be the most likely outcome. It does not inspire me work harder at all. If failure really is not an option then the outcome is set no matter what I do.

a4444f 6y ago

How the "How the self-esteem craze took over America" craze took over HN. "Number Six: Where am I? Number Two (not identified as yet): In the village. Six: What do you want? Two: Information. Six: Whose side are you on? Two: That would be telling. We want information...information... information!!! Six: You won't get it! Two: By hook or by crook, we will. Six: Who are you? Two: The new Number Two. Six: Who is Number One? Two: You are Number Six. Six (running on the Village's beach): I am not a number; I am a free man!!! Two: [Laughter]"

alexashka 6y ago

Is it a craze? Or is it fashion? Today it's jeans with cuts on the knees, tomorrow it's polkadots. Yesterday it was self esteem, today it is he/him, she/her. I like trends. I enjoy fashion. There are many trends to choose from. Delightful. Self esteem was innocuous light reading that soothed my teenage and young adult anxiety. I found it beneficial at the time.

rasengan0 6y ago

Extra shiny stars if you know the 300 million USD secret... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(2006_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(2006_film) Koosh! you're special!

deleted 6y ago

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binarycodedhex 6y ago

It seems to me that the self-esteem movement enlarged egos and arrogance rather than self-reliance or resilience, and so these sort of individuals tend to grow up to be selfish, haughty, entitled people who collapse under any sort of real challenge.

auganov 6y ago

Not sure what's the point of attacking self-esteem as a general concept. Perhaps there's some valid criticism of policies aimed at boosting it. But the article is trying to convince us we shouldn't want to feel good about ourselves because a random study here and there didn't show a desirable correlation. If a study shows happiness doesn't make you rich should you stop being happy? It's a story of how most psychological research struggles with major epistemological issues.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

You can never win the lottery if you don’t play.

ztjio 6y ago

Self esteem isn't confidence. A lot of this seems to be borne out of the misunderstanding of what self esteem actually is. I remember this whole craze, I grew up in the thick of it. One thing the "preachers" utterly failed at is understanding and thus communicating what it even means to have self esteem. Then one day I came across this most profoundly enlightening article about a commentary on self esteem by the one and only Bruce Lee https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/12/18/bruce-lee-artist-of-life-self-esteem/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/12/18/bruce-lee-artist-of... What does it mean to hold someone else in high esteem? One could argue it means you respect their opinion or their actions, and then they can serve as a role model, a source of validation. So therefore self esteem is the critical ability to derive validation in your actions from your self. Self esteem is NOT just believing you can do something or be great or whatever. That's confidence. That's got nothing to do with self esteem at all. What self esteem comes down to is deriving direction, right from wrong, validation, etc. from one's self. This is so important, because, if you derive validation through pride in reflection of others then you become a slave to those others. This is what self esteem is about and why it's so critical. The craze lost the view. But the core message is still true today. Lee also recognizes the challenge in cultivating self esteem, that it requires constant effort. It's not simply about "believing it so therefore it's true" like so many self esteem preachers would have had you believe during the craze. It's a challenge and it's an ongoing effort, like any other kind of hygiene. It's common to suggest people think for themselves. This is impossible without cultivated self-esteem. I would argue that a huge number of people today suffer due to a lack of self esteem. The personality cults that we see destroying society today can arguably be enabled by looking to others for validation instead ourselves. It's a drug. It's far too easy to find outside validation now. Self esteem is enabling, yes, but it's also grounding. It's too easy to believe lies if you fail to ground your validation of action and thought in something more constant than the fleeting voices of strangers on the internet. TL; DR: Self esteem is not about confidence in your abilities (or the idea you can do something because you believe you can), it's about recognizing yourself as a legitimate (perhaps the most legitimate) source of validation of your actions and choices instead of deriving validation only from others and thus self-esteem is how you avoid becoming a slave to the judgement of others. It requires constant maintenance. The "craze" definitely failed to understand and communicate this.