For psychologists about 40 years ago, self-esteem was one of the most researched areas. It was commonly believed that people that had lots of self-esteem tended to be extremely successful and that if you were able to increase your self-esteem, you would be wildly successful, in academics, social life, and everything in between. A famous therapist of the time even said: “I cannot think of a single psychological problem from anxiety and depression, to fear of intimacy or of success, to spouse battery or child molestation that is not traceable to the problem of low self-esteem” (Branden, 1984]. Simply put, at the time, people were highly convinced that having high self-esteem was the holy grail of success in life
Causation and correlation
Amidst the hey-day of self-esteem, there was lots of research going on covering the effect of self-esteem on kids’ school grades. It was always found that the kids with higher self-esteem had much better grades than those that didn’t. Psychologists also found that people with depression or weren’t as successful in life had much lower self-esteem. There was seemingly endless research proving that self-esteem was indeed a very important factor related to success in life. However, this assumption was based off what is, probably, the most common mistake in psychology.
Later, when psychologists looked further into it, they found that it was the other way round. The grades came first, then the self-esteem. The psychologists initially found a correlation between school grades and esteem, without fully grasping what caused what. But when psychologists looked at differences in years, they found that kids’ self-esteem was not a predictor for their grades next year. However, their grades in the previous year were a predictor for their next year. From this, psychologists started to realize that it was not self-esteem causing the kids’ grades to go up – it was the kids’ personal successes and achievements which resulted in their self-esteem to go up.
Further research was also conducted on whether self-esteem impacts a person’s likability. Much likes academic success, there was also a lot of belief in the idea that people with self-esteem were better socially and that people liked them more. In this experiment, researchers took two strangers and just simply had them talk with each other, and get acquainted with one another. After the participants had gotten acquainted, they measured their self-esteem using the standard self-esteem test, and asked the other one their opinion of the other. The researchers found that self-esteem had no impact on what people thought of others. The only notable difference was that the people with self-esteem thought that the other person liked them better. There was no actual difference in likability
The true uses of self-esteem
So, if psychologists were wrong about self-esteem, and it isn’t as useful as we may have once thought, why should we care about self esteem. Despite the effects of high self-esteem not being as pronounced as we may have once thought, self-esteem does help in two crucial areas of life.
Happiness
While it may not make you more successful, or more liked by others, self-esteem’s primary use is to keep you happy. People who have high self-esteem are always the happiest people, because they are able to feel good about themselves, others’ opinion of them, and have confidence in the things they do.
Low self-esteem has often been linked to depression and other mental illnesses that can be caused by not liking yourself. In this way, the positive illusions that come with self-esteem are very useful. Psychologists have found that depressed people actually see the world much more accurately than those who don’t. Having positive illusions supporting you through daily life can be largely beneficial, albeit not too much. Self-esteem helps greatly in this, allowing people to think they are good rather than just being good
Taking initiative
The other major benefit of self-esteem is that people with high self-esteem are much more prone to taking risks than people without it. This comes from a very different way of thinking when comparing people with high self-esteem and low self-esteem. People who have lower self-esteem have a mindset more akin to ‘failure avoidance’ rather than achieving new things. This is due to a lack of self-belief. On the contrary, someone with high self-esteem is much more likely to approach any new area with the mindset of doing new things, or an ‘achievement’ focused mindset. Because of this, they are much more willing to learn new skills or attempt new challenges.
For your mental health and overall happiness, it is important to maintain a healthy of amount self-esteem, as there is no doubt it is useful in your daily life. However, it is important to consider that it is not the be-all and end-all of success a social skills. There are many other internal skills such as self-control and self-confidence that are worth learning in order to improve yourself and grow as a person.