I just saw this in SciAm (apparently from the January 2005 issue):
Exploding the Self-Esteem Myth
Here's just a section (it's too long to paste the whole thing here):
Quote:
Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll
How about teenagers? How does self-esteem, or the lack thereof, influence their love life, in particular their sexual activity? Investigators have examined this subject extensively. All in all, the results do not support the idea that low self-esteem predisposes young people to more or earlier sexual activity. If anything, those with high self-esteem are less inhibited, more willing to disregard risks and more prone to engage in sex. At the same time, bad sexual experiences and unwanted pregnancies appear to lower self-esteem.
If not sex, then how about alcohol or illicit drugs? Abuse of these substances is one of the most worrisome behaviors among young people, and many psychologists once believed that boosting self-esteem would prevent such problems. The thought was that people with low self-esteem turn to drinking or drugs for solace. The data, however, do not consistently show that low adolescent self-esteem causes or even correlates with the abuse of alcohol or other drugs. In particular, in a large-scale study in 2000, Rob McGee and Sheila M. Williams of the University of Otago Medical School in New Zealand found no correlation between self-esteem measured between ages nine and 13 and drinking or drug use at age 15. Even when findings do show links between alcohol use and self-esteem, they are mixed and inconclusive. A few studies have shown that high self-esteem is associated with frequent alcohol consumption, but another suggests the opposite. We did find, however, some evidence that low self-esteem contributes to illicit drug use. In particular, Judy A. Andrews and Susan C. Duncan of the Oregon Research Institute found in 1997 that declining levels of academic motivation (the main focus of their study) caused self-esteem to drop, which in turn led to marijuana use, although the connection was rather weak.
Interpretation of the findings on drinking and drug abuse is probably complicated by the fact that some people approach the experience out of curiosity or thrill seeking, whereas others may use it to cope with or escape from chronic unhappiness. The overall result is that no categorical statements can be made. The same is true for tobacco use, where our study-by-study review uncovered a preponderance of results that show no influence. The few positive findings we unearthed could conceivably reflect nothing more than self-report bias.
Another complication that also clouds these studies is that the category of people with high self-esteem contains individuals whose self-opinions differ in important ways. Yet in most analyses, people with a healthy sense of self-respect are, for example, lumped with those feigning higher self-esteem than they really feel or who are narcissistic. Not surprisingly, the results of such investigations may produce weak or contradictory findings.
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Apparently, in the late 80s, California Governor Deukmejian set up a task for on self-esteem and personal and social responsibility. (I guess I was too young to remember this.) Anyway, it seems like most of it was a crock (regarding pregnancies and tobacco or alcohol use), but one of the studies is reported to show causation in the case of marijuana use. Personally, I think the jury is still out on that one in terms of using the study as evidence for more task forces and such. IMHO, if the 80s task force had spend more time encouraging social responsibility than high self-esteem, the studies might have turned out differently.
What I want to know is how TFPers remember their self-esteem in childhood/adolescence and how it has changed since then.
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Supple Cow's two cents:
My own experience in high school is a testament to the ineffectiveness of promoting the concept of self-esteem on its own. It was no different from any other random media message I received as a kid.
Drink Pepsi and be popular. Wear Maybelline and look pretty. Have confidence and people will like you. High self-esteem = Success. I didn't drink, smoke, do drugs or have sex (for the most part) in high school and I had (what I would call today) high self-esteem. At the time, though, I felt pretty bad most of the time. Most of my peers started experimenting with all of that stuff right around then and I wasn't popular because I didn't do it with them. So if some scientist doing this study had come up to me and asked me if I had high self-esteem, I would have said "No." I sure couldn't tell the difference between feeling judged by others and judged by myself at that point in my life. The findings in the SciAm article are not surprising to me at all.