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Yet another example of trying to solve psychological/emotional issues through cultural changes. The root problem is low self-esteem; it's internal, not external

Yet another example of trying to solve psychological/emotional issues through cultural changes. The root problem is low self-esteem; it's internal, not external; it takes deep inner work, not a change in social norms and teacher behavior. It affects some kids deeply, and some not at all. It's not "caused" by the culture or the environment, but by parenting. Psychology is stuck in a weird place. Most cultural knowledge of "self-esteem" comes from self-help crap, when it should be coming from psychologists. What if we lived in a world where everyone knows how to recognize low self-esteem, how to interact with insecure people effectively, and how to help them build their self-esteem durably, as opposed to these proto-team-building-exercises they're proposing here? The traditional thinking is that you fix emotional issues through therapy sessions; but if we changed the culture to become more emotions-aware, people would know how to help each other and themselves far better. The fact that so many pop-psychology books sell so much, is proof that there's a deep need for this. Some studies say 70-80% of people have some degree of low self-esteem. Depending on the study, 50-70% of the whole population have an attachment disorder, and literally lack the ability to form healthy emotional bonds. You don't fix that through culture. "Instructors could create activities in which each student becomes an 'expert' on a different topic"? Come on man. They have to let go of the old DSM-5 model of "10-15 of the population is crazy, everyone else is perfectly fine". Psychologists have a far bigger role to play in society than they currently do. Fixing psychological and emotional problems through cultural change just doesn't solve anything. Fix the root cause. You would literally fix both the low self-esteem that inhibits people from asking questions, and the bullying that results from being seen as "dumb".

bminor13 4y ago
> but if we changed the culture to become more emotions-aware, people would know how to help each other and themselves far better. > Fixing psychological and emotional problems through cultural change just doesn't solve anything. By my reading, the two quotes are in direct opposition to one other. It sounds like you are advocating for cultural change - just a different type/approach than is currently used?
- concinds 4y ago
  It's more profound than that, I'll restate: Cultural change that addresses behaviors or focuses on other external factors can't work; that's outside-in cultural change. But if you want to fix issues on a systemic, national, or worldwide level (which is the goal here), you do need some kind of cultural change. Cultural change that focuses on inside-out psychology (not the movie) is what I call "psychological change"; the cultural element is just the "trojan horse" through which any systemic change must happen. Example: - banning magazines that show excessively thin models, because girls "become insecure when they look at them", is the thinking I denounce. If they had high self-esteem they couldn't be affected by a magazine cover. If they have low self-esteem, they will be. But the magazine is blamed, and legislation and activist momentum focuses on that. The self-esteem problem doesn't get solved, just displaced. Exactly the same with the "Instagram harms teen girls' mental health" viewpoints. That's only a problem because 80% of the population has low self-esteem and is unaware of it. Shouldn't that be fixed? Implement a culture where people, for example: - know the signs of low self-esteem - know exactly how to address it in themselves, without pop-psych quakery or needing to pay for therapy sessions - know how to address it in others - know what assertiveness looks like, and how to do it - know how to problem-solve personal or relationship problems - know how to effectively interact to defensiveness, depression, argumentativeness, egotism, insincerity, power struggles, irresponsibility, prejudice, whatever; without getting upset at the other person; how to assert boundaries when faced with people like that, and how to help them - how to evaluate others' emotional health, so people can make more informed choices in mates and spouses - know how to evaluate if their relationships are healthy, and what to do about it if they're not - how to grieve effectively - could go on, and on. So many of society's problems come from psychological illiteracy. Again, people's obsession with pop-psychology proves that people see a big need in learning more. Sadly, the pop-psychology craze mostly focuses on superficial things like self-talk, or on trying to, for example, "spot" signs of Narcissism or psychopathy in other people, to try to "protect oneself" from these people; it's not deep enough and doesn't get people to actually understand themselves and each other better; just to project various medical labels onto others and themselves (self-diagnose). What I'm proposing is outside that framework of "mentally ill vs normal" and focuses on empathically learning more about oneself and others and ultimately being able to help each other. The cultural change is just meant to address that; it's a change in awareness and knowledge, not in behavior.
noselasd 4y ago
Can we be confident that 70-80% of people having low self esteem is not a cultural problem, and can't be fixed by cultural changes as you suggest ?
majormajor 4y ago
> It's not "caused" by the culture or the environment, but by parenting. I don't think you can treat people's parenting behavior as being a non-environment-influenced thing.
hosh 4y ago
This is deeper than self-esteem issues. It very much has to do with cultural norms. I wrote more in another comment, but just a few examples: - Dr. Carol Dewek has studied the difference between kids with "growth mindset" and "achievement mindset". The kids with "growth mindset" do not have the same kind of relationship with failure than the ones with "achievement mindset". Framed this way, it might be more accurate to say that kids with achievemement mindset are afraid to ask for help as early as 5 years old. - Indigenous families, and other cultures like Japan, cultivate independence in their toddlers. The indigenous families incorporate a toddler's natural inclination to help into building skills for chores, with real stakes. Knowing tha their contribution actually matters, they develop both intrinsic motivation as well as a self-esteem that is internalized rather than requiring validation from something outside of them. - Montessori emphasizes developing a child's capacity to be independent These are all different than the mainstream modern culture in the US. For example, a modern parent in the US might feel time-pressure and so it is easier to do the household chores instead of taking the time to incorporate the toddler. My toddler is not yet 2, and is already helping me feed the dogs and cats. He not only wants to do this, he gets upset when he can't. What's surprising for me is that, doing those chores with him turns those chores from something mechanical to something that's enjoyable for me. It's very much possible to do for a modern family. So yes, I think this very much is something in the culture, with the poor self-esteem being a symptom of the culture.
- concinds 4y ago
  Some cultures are more aware of emotional health than others, and some cultural practices favor good emotional health while others favor emotional neglect. No question. But all the examples you give, I'd put in the "psychological change" category, not the "cultural change" category. Those are the things I support; and there's not enough focus on them. I'll admit my wording causes confusion; see my other reply. I think what you're highlighting is extremely different from what I refer to as cultural change, like let's say the "body positivity movement", where people have pre-existing low self-esteem, which leads to self-neglect and emotional eating, which leads to weight gain, and they're focused on the superficial problem (feeling embarrassed by being fat) rather than the core issue (being fat because of low emotional health). "Every fat cell is an unshed tear." That perfectly highlights the ineffectiveness of superficial cultural change, over deep psychology-based change like the examples you give. And to address your last point: low self-esteem is caused mostly by poor parental emotional health; you can put kids in Montessori schools, but if they don't develop healthy attachment to their parents, it'll only help on the margin. The change needs to be even deeper than that. The article we're commenting on doesn't mention kids' self-esteem as being a factor at all; or the obvious observation that some kids are afraid of being judged, while some aren't. It treats it as a cultural problem that's easily solved by culture, rather than a deeper psychological/emotional problem that can be addressed long-term by deeper cultural change; really, it ignores the psychological dimension completely. Clearly, most academic psychologists are missing the mark here.
yalogin 4y ago
Anything related to psychological or emotional are never that black and white. Every thing mentioned in the article could on a spectrum. Teachers and classmates could range from supportive to downright mean and it could change across every school/class/individual basis. The atmosphere at home matters a lot too. So establishing a base cultural norm is not a bad thing. Issues like this are already difficult to solve at a group level so as a society these norms will help us establish a base expectations in terms of norms and that would make it a little better to theorize.
bergenty 4y ago
Self esteem can be fixed by simple things like being more attractive, more intelligent and/or more popular. We should just use genetic engineering to achieve these things as soon as possible.
- robocat 4y ago
  Self-esteem is also influenced by height, colour, gender, ethnic background, religious background, etcetera. OP seems to think not only that good parenting can beat external social influences, but that perfect parenting is simply a matter of deciding to be perfect. OP probably blames parents for all negative psychological outcomes for children: “It's not ‘caused’ by the culture or the environment, but by parenting”.
  - Godel_unicode 4y ago
    What you’re talking about is confidence that others will like you, not a sense that you matter. The latter is self esteem, the former is compensating (or perhaps ingroup). If you have a deep sense that you matter and that your value to society comes from who you are, then people being shitty to you because you’re short and the wrong shade won’t prevent you from showing up and taking up space. It’s called _self_ esteem.
    - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
      It's called delusion. Your survival and quality of life depends on others liking you so we were selected to optimize for being liked by others. Case in point the Queen Elizabeth died at 96 but given her quality of life in terms of novelty and free luxury stuff of the highest kind (and in all realms ranging from mansions to yachts to castles to planes to jewelery) she lived like 2000 years of a regular person life. All that because she was liked by millions of people (or the institution of monarchy is) Being liked by others is the only thing that matters for quality of life purposes, if you aren't then feeling shitty is a safety mechanism which promopts you to action and to pursue likeability to get some quality of life and not waste the precious little time that you have been given.
- 4y ago
rmah 4y ago
Um, if 70% to 80% of people have "low self-esteem", isn't that just "normal" self-esteem? Please don't take my comment as snark, I'm asking this in all seriousness. When most people possess some psychological trait, perhaps we should ask ourselves if this is just the way people are? And perhaps the cure is worse than the disease? Is it possible that encouraging typical people to have "higher self esteem" will result in increased narcissism, entitlement or overconfidence? And maybe that overconfidence, when it hits the reality that they are not, in fact, better (along some arbitrary axis) at something vs most other people, their ego shatters? I don't know, but... To be clear, I'm not trying to assert a position here. I'm open to being very wrong about the thesis behind the above questions.
- zdragnar 4y ago
  I suspect that percentage varies significantly between geographic and cultural regions. Further, "normal" typically means that not only is a status common, but that it does not interfere with daily life. Even if 100% of kids have low self esteem, it is "low" and not "normal" because, by definition, it interfers with common social interactions and daily tasks.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >Even if 100% of kids have low self esteem, it is "low" and not "normal" because, by definition, it interfers with common social interactions and daily tasks. What does "interfers with common social interactions and daily tasks" mean? It's hard to talk about self-esteem in a superlative way (you can be too cocky), so let's talk about another trait: attention. I'm sure that everyone could do better in life if they have superhuman levels of attention, but most people only have normal levels of attention. If with superhuman levels of attention you could study and get 95% on a test, but with average levels of attention you could only study enough to get 80% on a test, does that mean count as "interfering" with your academic ability? Is it just some arbitrary grade cut-off? What if you're so attention deficient that you can't focus on a task for more than 10 minutes, but it's fine because you also happen to be a genius that only needs 10 minutes of studying to get 80%?
tempie_deleteme 4y ago
> by the culture or the environment, but by parenting. uhm, so much of our culture and education comes directly from schools and media, not from our parents. in fact, it's likely that most people learn not to ask question in a school-setting. hence we're (hoping that not anymore) in a culture that causes such low-self esteem by means of its educational institutions. interactions with institutionally defined authority figures whose job is to teach (i.e. to parent you without the emotional bonds of your real parents) are a root cause. the root cause is this culture which induces such problems with its relentless hirearchical control (authority) logic.
dolni 4y ago
> Some studies say 70-80% of people have some degree of low self-esteem. Depending on the study, 50-70% of the whole population have an attachment disorder, and literally lack the ability to form healthy emotional bonds. It's worth asking who gets to decide what "low self-esteem", "attachment disorder", and "healthy emotional bonds" are.
mlyle 4y ago
> Yet another example of trying to solve psychological/emotional issues through cultural changes. The root problem is low self-esteem; it's internal, not external; it takes deep inner work, not a change in social norms and teacher behavior. It affects some kids deeply, and some not at all. It's not "caused" by the culture or the environment, but by parenting. I think it can be both. Surely our cultural influences and practices in childrearing (including by societal mechanisms like schooling) matter. There's a huge pop in anxiety among youth, that no one quite knows the causes of (climate worries? increased academic pressure? social media? collapse of portions of the social fabric?). This massive rise indicates there's some degree of underlying change causing it, and raises the prospect we could change back or change to be even better.
dekleinewolf 4y ago
> It's not "caused" by the culture or the environment, but by parenting. Isn't the way people parent something mainly determined by culture and the environment?
- banannaise 4y ago
  But we towed them beyond the environment. They're not in the environment. (sorry, I know I'm not supposed to be glib and off topic, but I can't resist a good reference to The Front Fell Off)

bminor13 4y ago

> but if we changed the culture to become more emotions-aware, people would know how to help each other and themselves far better. > Fixing psychological and emotional problems through cultural change just doesn't solve anything. By my reading, the two quotes are in direct opposition to one other. It sounds like you are advocating for cultural change - just a different type/approach than is currently used?

concinds 4y ago
It's more profound than that, I'll restate: Cultural change that addresses behaviors or focuses on other external factors can't work; that's outside-in cultural change. But if you want to fix issues on a systemic, national, or worldwide level (which is the goal here), you do need some kind of cultural change. Cultural change that focuses on inside-out psychology (not the movie) is what I call "psychological change"; the cultural element is just the "trojan horse" through which any systemic change must happen. Example: - banning magazines that show excessively thin models, because girls "become insecure when they look at them", is the thinking I denounce. If they had high self-esteem they couldn't be affected by a magazine cover. If they have low self-esteem, they will be. But the magazine is blamed, and legislation and activist momentum focuses on that. The self-esteem problem doesn't get solved, just displaced. Exactly the same with the "Instagram harms teen girls' mental health" viewpoints. That's only a problem because 80% of the population has low self-esteem and is unaware of it. Shouldn't that be fixed? Implement a culture where people, for example: - know the signs of low self-esteem - know exactly how to address it in themselves, without pop-psych quakery or needing to pay for therapy sessions - know how to address it in others - know what assertiveness looks like, and how to do it - know how to problem-solve personal or relationship problems - know how to effectively interact to defensiveness, depression, argumentativeness, egotism, insincerity, power struggles, irresponsibility, prejudice, whatever; without getting upset at the other person; how to assert boundaries when faced with people like that, and how to help them - how to evaluate others' emotional health, so people can make more informed choices in mates and spouses - know how to evaluate if their relationships are healthy, and what to do about it if they're not - how to grieve effectively - could go on, and on. So many of society's problems come from psychological illiteracy. Again, people's obsession with pop-psychology proves that people see a big need in learning more. Sadly, the pop-psychology craze mostly focuses on superficial things like self-talk, or on trying to, for example, "spot" signs of Narcissism or psychopathy in other people, to try to "protect oneself" from these people; it's not deep enough and doesn't get people to actually understand themselves and each other better; just to project various medical labels onto others and themselves (self-diagnose). What I'm proposing is outside that framework of "mentally ill vs normal" and focuses on empathically learning more about oneself and others and ultimately being able to help each other. The cultural change is just meant to address that; it's a change in awareness and knowledge, not in behavior.

noselasd 4y ago

Can we be confident that 70-80% of people having low self esteem is not a cultural problem, and can't be fixed by cultural changes as you suggest ?

majormajor 4y ago

> It's not "caused" by the culture or the environment, but by parenting. I don't think you can treat people's parenting behavior as being a non-environment-influenced thing.

hosh 4y ago

This is deeper than self-esteem issues. It very much has to do with cultural norms. I wrote more in another comment, but just a few examples: - Dr. Carol Dewek has studied the difference between kids with "growth mindset" and "achievement mindset". The kids with "growth mindset" do not have the same kind of relationship with failure than the ones with "achievement mindset". Framed this way, it might be more accurate to say that kids with achievemement mindset are afraid to ask for help as early as 5 years old. - Indigenous families, and other cultures like Japan, cultivate independence in their toddlers. The indigenous families incorporate a toddler's natural inclination to help into building skills for chores, with real stakes. Knowing tha their contribution actually matters, they develop both intrinsic motivation as well as a self-esteem that is internalized rather than requiring validation from something outside of them. - Montessori emphasizes developing a child's capacity to be independent These are all different than the mainstream modern culture in the US. For example, a modern parent in the US might feel time-pressure and so it is easier to do the household chores instead of taking the time to incorporate the toddler. My toddler is not yet 2, and is already helping me feed the dogs and cats. He not only wants to do this, he gets upset when he can't. What's surprising for me is that, doing those chores with him turns those chores from something mechanical to something that's enjoyable for me. It's very much possible to do for a modern family. So yes, I think this very much is something in the culture, with the poor self-esteem being a symptom of the culture.

concinds 4y ago
Some cultures are more aware of emotional health than others, and some cultural practices favor good emotional health while others favor emotional neglect. No question. But all the examples you give, I'd put in the "psychological change" category, not the "cultural change" category. Those are the things I support; and there's not enough focus on them. I'll admit my wording causes confusion; see my other reply. I think what you're highlighting is extremely different from what I refer to as cultural change, like let's say the "body positivity movement", where people have pre-existing low self-esteem, which leads to self-neglect and emotional eating, which leads to weight gain, and they're focused on the superficial problem (feeling embarrassed by being fat) rather than the core issue (being fat because of low emotional health). "Every fat cell is an unshed tear." That perfectly highlights the ineffectiveness of superficial cultural change, over deep psychology-based change like the examples you give. And to address your last point: low self-esteem is caused mostly by poor parental emotional health; you can put kids in Montessori schools, but if they don't develop healthy attachment to their parents, it'll only help on the margin. The change needs to be even deeper than that. The article we're commenting on doesn't mention kids' self-esteem as being a factor at all; or the obvious observation that some kids are afraid of being judged, while some aren't. It treats it as a cultural problem that's easily solved by culture, rather than a deeper psychological/emotional problem that can be addressed long-term by deeper cultural change; really, it ignores the psychological dimension completely. Clearly, most academic psychologists are missing the mark here.

yalogin 4y ago

Anything related to psychological or emotional are never that black and white. Every thing mentioned in the article could on a spectrum. Teachers and classmates could range from supportive to downright mean and it could change across every school/class/individual basis. The atmosphere at home matters a lot too. So establishing a base cultural norm is not a bad thing. Issues like this are already difficult to solve at a group level so as a society these norms will help us establish a base expectations in terms of norms and that would make it a little better to theorize.

bergenty 4y ago

Self esteem can be fixed by simple things like being more attractive, more intelligent and/or more popular. We should just use genetic engineering to achieve these things as soon as possible.

robocat 4y ago
Self-esteem is also influenced by height, colour, gender, ethnic background, religious background, etcetera. OP seems to think not only that good parenting can beat external social influences, but that perfect parenting is simply a matter of deciding to be perfect. OP probably blames parents for all negative psychological outcomes for children: “It's not ‘caused’ by the culture or the environment, but by parenting”.
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  What you’re talking about is confidence that others will like you, not a sense that you matter. The latter is self esteem, the former is compensating (or perhaps ingroup). If you have a deep sense that you matter and that your value to society comes from who you are, then people being shitty to you because you’re short and the wrong shade won’t prevent you from showing up and taking up space. It’s called _self_ esteem.
  - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
    It's called delusion. Your survival and quality of life depends on others liking you so we were selected to optimize for being liked by others. Case in point the Queen Elizabeth died at 96 but given her quality of life in terms of novelty and free luxury stuff of the highest kind (and in all realms ranging from mansions to yachts to castles to planes to jewelery) she lived like 2000 years of a regular person life. All that because she was liked by millions of people (or the institution of monarchy is) Being liked by others is the only thing that matters for quality of life purposes, if you aren't then feeling shitty is a safety mechanism which promopts you to action and to pursue likeability to get some quality of life and not waste the precious little time that you have been given.
4y ago

rmah 4y ago

Um, if 70% to 80% of people have "low self-esteem", isn't that just "normal" self-esteem? Please don't take my comment as snark, I'm asking this in all seriousness. When most people possess some psychological trait, perhaps we should ask ourselves if this is just the way people are? And perhaps the cure is worse than the disease? Is it possible that encouraging typical people to have "higher self esteem" will result in increased narcissism, entitlement or overconfidence? And maybe that overconfidence, when it hits the reality that they are not, in fact, better (along some arbitrary axis) at something vs most other people, their ego shatters? I don't know, but... To be clear, I'm not trying to assert a position here. I'm open to being very wrong about the thesis behind the above questions.

zdragnar 4y ago
I suspect that percentage varies significantly between geographic and cultural regions. Further, "normal" typically means that not only is a status common, but that it does not interfere with daily life. Even if 100% of kids have low self esteem, it is "low" and not "normal" because, by definition, it interfers with common social interactions and daily tasks.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Even if 100% of kids have low self esteem, it is "low" and not "normal" because, by definition, it interfers with common social interactions and daily tasks. What does "interfers with common social interactions and daily tasks" mean? It's hard to talk about self-esteem in a superlative way (you can be too cocky), so let's talk about another trait: attention. I'm sure that everyone could do better in life if they have superhuman levels of attention, but most people only have normal levels of attention. If with superhuman levels of attention you could study and get 95% on a test, but with average levels of attention you could only study enough to get 80% on a test, does that mean count as "interfering" with your academic ability? Is it just some arbitrary grade cut-off? What if you're so attention deficient that you can't focus on a task for more than 10 minutes, but it's fine because you also happen to be a genius that only needs 10 minutes of studying to get 80%?

tempie_deleteme 4y ago

> by the culture or the environment, but by parenting. uhm, so much of our culture and education comes directly from schools and media, not from our parents. in fact, it's likely that most people learn not to ask question in a school-setting. hence we're (hoping that not anymore) in a culture that causes such low-self esteem by means of its educational institutions. interactions with institutionally defined authority figures whose job is to teach (i.e. to parent you without the emotional bonds of your real parents) are a root cause. the root cause is this culture which induces such problems with its relentless hirearchical control (authority) logic.

dolni 4y ago

> Some studies say 70-80% of people have some degree of low self-esteem. Depending on the study, 50-70% of the whole population have an attachment disorder, and literally lack the ability to form healthy emotional bonds. It's worth asking who gets to decide what "low self-esteem", "attachment disorder", and "healthy emotional bonds" are.

mlyle 4y ago

> Yet another example of trying to solve psychological/emotional issues through cultural changes. The root problem is low self-esteem; it's internal, not external; it takes deep inner work, not a change in social norms and teacher behavior. It affects some kids deeply, and some not at all. It's not "caused" by the culture or the environment, but by parenting. I think it can be both. Surely our cultural influences and practices in childrearing (including by societal mechanisms like schooling) matter. There's a huge pop in anxiety among youth, that no one quite knows the causes of (climate worries? increased academic pressure? social media? collapse of portions of the social fabric?). This massive rise indicates there's some degree of underlying change causing it, and raises the prospect we could change back or change to be even better.

dekleinewolf 4y ago

> It's not "caused" by the culture or the environment, but by parenting. Isn't the way people parent something mainly determined by culture and the environment?

banannaise 4y ago
But we towed them beyond the environment. They're not in the environment. (sorry, I know I'm not supposed to be glib and off topic, but I can't resist a good reference to The Front Fell Off)