Forget about Self-Esteem

By John Fischer


February 10, 2005


Had enough of self-esteem? Roy F. Baumeister, professor of psychology at Florida State University seems to think we have. In an article “The Lowdown on High Self-Esteem,” [Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2005, p B11] he reveals how he was on a research team that studied self-esteem in 1973 with a sense of growing optimism that boosting a healthy view of self could solve many personal and social problems. Even though some of the early results were weaker and more ambiguous than he and his colleagues had hoped for, they nonetheless plowed ahead with their positive predictions on the benefits of self-esteem, confident that the data would eventually support their theories.


Now, 32 years later, fresh with data from a recent 5-year review commissioned by the American Psychological Society of all the studies on self-esteem that had accumulated over the last 30 years, Baumeister is ready to give up hope. “After all these years, I’m sorry to say, my recommendation is this: Forget about self-esteem and concentrate more on self-control and self-discipline.” Link to Story