Friday, December 31, 2004

- redesigning society to encourage development of healthy, self-realizing, responsible human beings
- developing a new human politics based on belief we human beings are innately inclined toward becoming life-affirming, constructive, responsible, trustworthy

In an article in the January issue of Scientific American, authors Roy F. Baumeister, Jennifer D. Campbell, Joachim I. Krueger and Kathleen D. Vohs describe an intensive literature review and then attempt to blow the worth of self-esteem out of the water.
Boosting people's sense of self-worth has become a national preoccupation. Yet surprisingly, research shows that such efforts are of little value in fostering academic progress or preventing undesirable behavior.
Raising self-esteem is not likely to boost performance in school or on the job.
After coming to the conclusion that high self-esteem does not lessen a tendency toward violence, that it does not deter adolescents from turning to alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and sex, and that it fails to improve academic or job performance, we got a boost when we looked into how self-esteem relates to happiness. The consistent finding is that people with high self-esteem are significantly happier than others. They are also less likely to be depressed.


The researchers started with studies of self esteem and academic performance. They didn't find much correlation. This is hardly surprizing, since grades rarely correlate to anything outside of the school system. Next, they considered the world of work.
Even if raising self-esteem does not foster academic progress, might it serve some purpose later, say, on the job? Apparently not. Studies of possible links between workers' self-regard and job performance echo what has been found with schoolwork: the simple search for correlations yields some suggestive results, but these do not show whether a good self-image leads to occupational success, or vice versa. In any case, the link is not particularly strong.This is the only paragraph supporting the authors' claim that self-esteem is not likely to boost performance on the job!
Just as correlation does not prove causality, lack of evidence does not prove that something fails to exist. If you're researching other people's findings, isn't it possible that they failed to ask the right questions? One wonders how many of the less than 200 studies dealt with work, not school.
Last time I read Scientific American, it was a bit more, ah, scientific.
My suspicion has been that higher self-esteem is positively correlated with job performance. This article didn't change that belief.
1 Comments:
I believe the issue is unwarranted high self-esteem. This can create a sense of entitlement and misdirected anger to those who see you as average when you feel you're the tops.
This resonates with the "helicopter parenting" story circulated by Elliot Masie about a parent trying to get an employer to re-assess her adult child's performance review-- she ALWAYS had THE highest reviews in school.
I came uopn the unwarranted self-esteem issue while reading up on Learned Optimism and Authentic Happiness (http://www.authentichappiness.org) from Dr. Martin Seligman.
Coincidentally, I saw Dr. Seligman speak a few hours after Jay Cross at Online Learning in Fall of 2004.
More coincidentally, one of my undergrad mentors had worked with him on learned helplessness in the 70's-- Dr. Seligman's first claim to fame.
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