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.

We are probably confusing two things in this comment:

* The healthy level of self esteem. (Normal as in ideal)

* The median level of self esteem. (Normal as in compared to others)

So we probably need better words. "SubOptimal" "Optimal" vs "Average" "Above Average" etc.?

A good comparison is what is the normal amount of sugar to consume per day? What is the healthy amount?

I like those questions. "Normal" just means norm, so yes, it's the norm to be relatively-to-significantly emotionally unhealthy. That doesn't mean that it's impossible to achieve a world where 80-90% of the world has secure, high self-esteem, and treats the remaining 10% of people with kindness and patience.

> Is it possible that encouraging typical people to have "higher self esteem" will result in increased narcissism, entitlement or overconfidence?

Absolutely; that's what the "self-esteem movement" in U.S. schools last century did, which is now widely denounced as harmful, and it's a perfect example of bad cultural change that wasn't deeply informed by psychology but instead on emulating behaviors. Low self-esteem is in the unconscious mind. You can try to think and behave like a confident person, but it's all a facade, a new set of learned coping mechanisms, unless you develop deeper self-awareness of your psyche and "do the inner work."

"Good" cultural change means promoting true psychological awareness and inside-out change. Here's a more detailed example if you want:

Pleasant emotions occur when our emotional needs are satisfied. Unpleasant (not "negative") emotions point to unmet emotional or physical needs (that include shame, i.e. low self-esteem). All emotions are useful since they tell you what your emotional needs are and how well they're satisfied. If you're mostly unhappy, you either have low self-awareness (of your thoughts, emotions, and needs at any given time), i.e. you have difficulty consciously identifying what your needs are; or, you can identify them but lack the (learnable) problem-solving skills to satisfy these needs. There are superficial emotional needs, and you can learn to "dig down" to the primary emotional needs that cause them. Sometimes, part of your unconscious can still feel deep unworthiness despite objectively impressive real-world achievements; that can be fixed by integrating that part of your subconscious that is stuck in the past, and bringing it back in line with the rest of your unconscious through inner work. Children have developmental emotional needs, which most of them, most of their teachers, and most of their parents are unaware of, and teaching these needs to all of them would help them do better. Groups (families, classrooms, companies) range from high-nurturance (helps people satisfy their emotional needs) to toxic (prevents people from satisfying their needs); high-nurturing groups (e.g. classrooms) have many traits in common. Group toxicity is generally caused by group leaders being emotionally unhealthy, i.e. having a poor ability to satisfy their own emotional needs effectively.

If the culture was promoting these ideas, I don't think that would be a cure worse than the disease. Going back to the article: building confident children means improving families' nurturance levels, teaching kids how to recognize their own needs and their child's developmental needs, and how to meet them; building children that do that inner work, and who then won't be afraid of "looking dumb" in the first place; and will be secure enough that they won't feel shame if someone dislikes them, and can try to achieve mutual respect with whoever dislikes them without losing their integrity or boundaries. Sounds far deeper and more meaningful than what the article proposes, no?

Here's a resource that might interest you: http://sfhelp.org/site/premises.htm and http://sfhelp.org/cx/skills/dig.htm (the whole site looks very old; but it was recommended to me by someone on /r/Buddhism years ago and is filled with gems).

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.

>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%?

There are formal definitions for attention deficit disorder, no need for the contrived example.

>There are formal definitions for attention deficit disorder

Have you looked at the DSM-5? The wording there is vaguer than you think. For instance

>1. Inattention: Six (or more) of the following symptoms have persisted for at least 6 months to a degree that is inconsistent with developmental level and that negatively impacts directly on social and academic/occupational activities:

> a. Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, at work, or during other activities (e.g., overlooks or misses details, work is inaccurate).

What does "negatively impacts" mean? What does "often" mean?

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519712/table/ch3.t3/

A lot of ADHD/autistic folks (including me) will note that a primary frustration with the DSM-5 is that it defines our conditions in terms of the things that frustrate other people rather than in terms of what we actually experience and how it affects us.

Lots of our behaviors "interfere with common social interactions"... if that interaction is with a neurotypical person who expects us to conform to their values. Differences in values and communication style are framed as something diseased that we need to change, rather than something different where we need to create mutual understandings.

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.

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.

The reason parents in the US tend to have children with "achievement mindset" is because the culture itself rewards and favors achievements instead of growth.

The reason parents in the US don't invest time with their toddlers is because they feel they don't have time. They don't have time because it is typically about career success (achievement), wealth, status, and so forth. Or in other social classes, it's just overwhelming to just be able to barely survive. Culturally, American has one of the highest overworked population (it is cultural because that is the generally accepted norm), scores among the highest for individualism (instead of collectivism). Those all play into how people parent.

And don't get me started on the idea of free range parenting. In this day and age, in America, letting the kids out to play in the streets can get you, as the parent, arrested for neglect and censured by the neighbors. Those are all part of the cultural norms. To do what you suggest at the psychological level requires pushing back against those cultural norms, some with legal consequences.

You are welcomed to define all of this as psychology, but I think if you talked with sociologists and other people, they would tell you these are cultural rather than psychological factors.

It's not stopping my wife and I from parenting my kid in the way we think is best for them. But I'm not blind to the fact that I am going against the grain of cultural norms and generally accepted behavior, beliefs, and practices of the mainstream US culture.

Maybe the difference in what you two are is that psychological is often internal to one person whereas cultural can be internal to many people.

For example, me working on the fear that I have to open up publicly because my house was robbed when I lived overseas and was a semi-celebrity can be my personal psychological journey. The collective "don't share too much about your private life online" could a collective cultural belief stemming from many different experiences that impacted individuals to have such beliefs and fears.

I've been thinking a lot about whether to change culture (group) or change psychology (individual) and my latest belief on this is that I want to get better at loving myself and loving others and then train the handful of people who also want to do that, with the idea being that if a few of us start, it may spread to others, this going from the individual to group, maybe psychological to cultural.

I don't necessarily like the psych/cultural distinction, as I think both often influence how I'm feeling. Scared to post because I might get robbed again, also scared to post because people may resond with "you shouldn't post things like that online."

So I think maybe it's both. However I still like the idea of starting with me and maybe a few others who really really want to get better at it and maybe influence by osmosis.

> So I think maybe it's both. However I still like the idea of starting with me and maybe a few others who really really want to get better at it and maybe influence by osmosis.

That's how I approach this too.

> The reason parents in the US tend to have children with "achievement mindset" is because the culture itself rewards and favors achievements instead of growth.

Self-confidence comes from achievement; there's no conflict between the two. That's again my distinction between culture (emulation, "you must achieve lots", which leads to burnt out kids) and psychology ("I'm confident in my abilities; I can achieve what I want if I work hard at it"). High-confidence kids will inherently want to achieve. There's no conflict; studies show that Asian kids have more of a growth mindset than other kids. Conditioning parental love to achievement is what's unnecesary and harmful.

And I think my reply to another commenter addresses the "culture-psychology" distinction better. I'm talking about cultural change meant to improve the psychological nurturance-level of families, schools, communities, which I call "psychological change" as shorthand. I'm criticizing cultural change that's psychologically illiterate, and treats the problems it solves as cultural problems rather than psychological problems. "Teach men not to rape", for example, is cultural change that completely ignores all psychological dimensions ("rape culture", i.e. trivializing sexual assault, is just a symptom of emotionally unhealthy people, not a cause). Same with the ADL's pyramid of hate, that sees "fear of difference" and "lack of self-reflection on privilege" as the root causes, when the real problems are emotional and psychological problems within society (lack of empathy) that lead to hate and bigotry.

Cultural change needs to be deeply informed by psychology to be effective. People are emotionally unhealthy, and the culture reflects that. Culture is downstream from psychology. Cultural change can address it, but only by causing psycohlogical change, not merely cultural change. Re-analyzing the examples above: reacting to bigoted people with hatred and ostracism is just another symptom our low-nurturance society. It's cultural change without psychological change. Buddhists had it right all along. Is that clearer?

> ("rape culture", i.e. trivializing sexual assault, is just a symptom of emotionally unhealthy people, not a cause)

It can be. But you can also be completely emotionally healthy and lack understanding of another person's perspective (or lack the cultural context to care) and cause tremendous harm.

We don't have the mental or emotional bandwidth to put ourselves in everyone else's shoes. The cultural norms we have are shortcuts to respect people's interests without that cognitive load.

Thinking and emoting is slow and fallible -- as Whitehead said, "It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments."

> Self-confidence comes from achievement

Perhaps you should lookup what Carol Dewek means by "achievement mindset" and "growth mindset". I don't think the way you are using it is the same that she is using it.

Self-confidence, self-esteem that is built from a process of intrinsic motivation is different than self-esteem built from extrinsic motivation. The self-esteem built from extrinsic motivation is shaky, and requires a constant feeding of validation.

The mainstream culture is such that kids, many parents, and some teachers understand self-esteem as you do, without making a distinction between how it is developed.

> Cultural change needs to be deeply informed by psychology to be effective.

I'm not arguing with you there. An individual is nested within the community. It also means you cannot really separate psychology from culture either.

Keep in mind, I have not once advocated that we change the culture. I am simply stating that the culture matters.

> People are emotionally unhealthy, and the culture reflects that. Culture is downstream from psychology. Cultural change can address it, but only by causing psycohlogical change, not merely cultural change.

That's an assumption that is not necessarily true. Psychology can also reflect culture, and it is not such a straightforward cause-and-effect. It's easy to see it as a hierarchical relationship (downstream vs. upstream), and to the extent that individuals are nested within a community, that's true. However, there are complex interaction between individuals and the communities they nest within. Just as you see that psychological changes must be taken into consideration for cultural change to be effective, cultural changes must be taken into consideration too as the context of that change. A tree is not just the trunk, the branches, the roots and the trees; it is also the sunlight, the soil, the wind, the seasons, the people ...

The way you talk about culture and culture change seems like a cynical observation of business buzzspeak. The way I have been talking about culture and culture change is more along the lines of sociology.

> Buddhists had it right all along.

That's a rabbit hole all on its own. Psychological changes are difficult to enact without mindfulness ... likewise, there's a collective consciousness (culture) in which changees are difficult to enact without mindfulness. Metta (loving-kindness) is powerful transformative, and the Mahayana practitioners ardently go all the way with that ... but what's also transformative is a neutral, agnostic attitude of "let the cosmos decide". Not everyone, even within the diverse practices of Buddhism, aspires to be a Bodhisattva. And then I can get into the whole bit about "consensus" or "nice" Buddhism that seems to be the Western, pop understanding of Buddhism ... And then there is also how Buddhist practices cultivates a non-dual perspective, in which no single part can be completely separated from the Whole. You can't separate the tree from the sun or the land. That there is a seamless Whole is the basis for metta in the first place ...

> Is that clearer?

Are you asking if you are communicating your point of view clearer, or are you saying that your point of view is more correct than mine's, and asking me if that correctness is clearer?

> Perhaps you should lookup what Carol Dewek means by "achievement mindset" and "growth mindset". I don't think the way you are using it is the same that she is using it.

No, I meant confidence comes from achievements, not "achievement mindset" (maybe you mean "fixed mindset"? Dweck never talked about "achievement mindset"). "A process of intrinsic motivation" is fuzzy-thinking gibberish to me. Confidence is the belief that you can accomplish things to an acceptable level, which comes from setting goals and achieving them. If you think I agree with "mainstream culture" on self-esteem then you clearly completely misunderstand me. Mainstream culture seems barely aware that self-esteem exists, and TFA is a perfect example.

>> Cultural change needs to be deeply informed by psychology to be effective.

>I'm not arguing with you there.

Then the rest of your post seems like a disagreement on semantics, because that's my entire point. People who try to address psychological problems on a solely cultural level are causing harm. People who address psychological problems through psychological changes accomplished through cultural changes are effective; but academia today, including most psychologists, rely on such fuzzy thinking and poor logic that they don't even realize the difference.

> Are you asking if you are communicating your point of view clearer, or are you saying that your point of view is more correct than mine's, and asking me if that correctness is clearer?

Obviously the former, because we're clearly talking past each other.

> , I meant confidence comes from achievements

Confidence coming from achievements is a terrible foundation for real confidence.

I did all kinds of things, and still found ways to doubt myself or think my purpose was exhausted.

Confidence from enjoying growth and knowing I can improve and be valuable no matter what the outcome of what I'm doing now is a much more solid footing. Plus, it makes me try harder, too, instead of having my "achievements" called into question by each failure.

> Obviously the former, because we're clearly talking past each other.

While this happens sometimes, that doesn't look like what's happening here. The other party here is incorporating your ideas into their framework to try to create a combined vision; you're mostly just disagreeing, sometimes with hostility.

> "A process of intrinsic motivation" is fuzzy-thinking gibberish to me.

Ok, I'm curious. Why do you think that is fuzzy-thinking gibberish to you?

> 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?

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

> 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?

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)

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 ?

> 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.

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.

I assume (hope?) that this is tongue in cheek, but it’s worth pointing out that there are tons of insecure people who are also beautiful, intelligent, and popular with their peers.

One important thing to realize is that none of those things actually exist; beautiful and intelligent are entirely relative. They can also be sources of friction; people get bullied for being smart, there’s a strong stereotype that beautiful people are actually stupid but that people tell them they’re smart because they’re hot, etc. There’s also the Ivy League problem; when your self esteem is based on being smarter than everyone else and then you get surrounded by other smart people it can tank your self confidence.

Self esteem is about realizing that your value is not derived from other’s opinion of you. That’s why it’s called self esteem.

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”.

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.

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.