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Having and Pursuing Self-Esteem: Costs and Benefits
With a few notable exceptions, most research on self-esteem has focused exclusively on level of trait self-esteem—whether people typically or characteristically have high or low self-regard. Independent of whether people have high or low trait self-esteem, however, they may pursue self-esteem. That is, they may organize their behavior around the goal of maintaining, protecting, or enhancing self-esteem by demonstrating that they have certain abilities or qualities (Crocker & Park, 2004a). People with either high or low trait self-esteem may pursue self-esteem.
Benefits and Costs of Having High Self-Esteem
Hundreds of studies have demonstrated the benefits of having high trait self-esteem. The clearest benefits are the positive emotions, and the positive and certain self-concepts that accompany high self-esteem.
Emotional Benefits
Self-esteem is strongly related to the affective tone of daily life, with high self-esteem people reporting more positive affect, more life satisfaction, less anxiety, less hopelessness, and fewer depressive symptoms than people who are low in self-esteem. Self-esteem is the strongest predictor of life satisfaction in the United States, outstripping other predictors such as age, income, education, physical health, and marital status, and all other psychological variables. These effects are typically large, with correlations around .60. Although high self-esteem is strongly correlated with positive emotions, evidence that it causes them is less clear (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003).
Self-esteem is also related to the beliefs people hold about themselves. High self-esteem people believe they are intelligent, attractive, and popular (Baumeister et al., 2003). Although high self-esteem people acknowledge that they had flaws or made mistakes in the distant past, they see their present or recent past selves in a particularly positive light, believing they have changed for the better even when concurrent evaluations suggest they have not (Ross, 2002; Wilson & Ross, 2001). High self-esteem people believe they are superior to others in many domains, and they expect their futures to be rosy relative to others (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Consequently, high self-esteem people have more self-confidence than low self-esteem people, especially following an initial failure (Baumeister et al., 2003).
Objective Benefits
In light of the positive emotions and favorable beliefs about the self associated with high self-esteem, it seems reasonable to think that people who have high self-esteem fare better in terms of the objective outcomes they experience in life—that they would not only be happier but also richer, more successful, better loved, and perhaps even more attractive than low self-esteem people. Although researchers have long speculated that high self-esteem also has objective benefits, these hypothesized benefits are typically small or nonexistent. For example, a recent and extensive review concluded that high self-esteem produces pleasant feelings and enhanced initiative, but does not cause high academic achievement, good job performance, or leadership, nor does low self-esteem cause violence, smoking, drinking, taking drugs, or becoming sexually active at an early age (Baumeister et al., 2003).
Costs
Some recent evidence suggests that high self-esteem has costs, especially under conditions of ego threat. For example, high self-esteem people are more likely to persist in the face of failure, but this creates problems when failure is unavoidable and persistence does not pay (Baumeister et al., 2003). High self-esteem people under ego threat become overconfident and take risks, sometimes losing money as a result (Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1993).
Although having high self-esteem has strong emotional benefits for the self, it may have costs for other people. For example, the positive and certain self-concepts of high self-esteem people often lead them to become hostile, defensive, and blaming when things go badly (Blaine & Crocker, 1993). High self-esteem people become less likable, whereas low self-esteem people become more likable under ego threat (Heatherton & Vohs, 2000; Vohs & Heatherton, 2001).
Conclusions
In general, it seems likely that both low and high self-esteem are helpful or adaptive in some situations, and not adaptive in others. Because low self-esteem people doubt their abilities and worry about whether others will accept them, they tend to integrate feedback from others (Brockner, 1984), yet lack the self-confidence to act on their goals, or drive others away through their need for reassurance (Joiner, Alfano, & Metalsky, 1992). Because high self-esteem people tend to think well of themselves, and overestimate their intelligence, attractiveness, and likability, they may be less realistic about their strengths and weaknesses than people who score lower on measures of self-esteem (Taylor & Brown, 1988). These positive illusions can be helpful or unhelpful, depending on the circumstances. For example, the positive self-views associated with high self-esteem may be helpful for asking the boss for a raise, but interfere with understanding her feedback about areas in which one needs to improve before a raise is forthcoming. Although focusing on one’s strengths and minimizing one’s weaknesses often foster positive mood, optimism, and perseverance, when one’s weaknesses interfere with accomplishing important goals and can be addressed, the exaggeratedly positive and highly certain self-views of high self-esteem may be an obstacle to recognizing and addressing their weaknesses and accomplishing their goals.
Benefits and Costs of Pursuing Self-Esteem
In contrast to most research on the costs and benefits of having high or low trait self-esteem, my own research is focused on the costs and benefits of pursuing self-esteem. This research focuses on what people believe they need to be or do to have worth and value as a person, and how they regulate their behavior around the goal of demonstrating that they are those things. Generally, people want to prove that they have the abilities or qualities that they believe give them value or worth as a person (Crocker & Park, 2004a). Although pursuing self-esteem and having self-esteem might seem logically connected (Pyszczynski & Cox, 2004; Sheldon, 2004), they are both theoretically and empirically distinct; people with both high and low trait self-esteem can pursue self-esteem, and pursuing self-esteem is not a guarantee that one will be successful, and achieve high self-esteem (Crocker & Park, 2004b). Successful pursuit of self-esteem raises state self-esteem, but the magnitude of the boost to self-esteem is smaller than the drop in self-esteem when one fails at this pursuit (Crocker, Karpinski, Quinn, & Chase, 2003; Crocker, Sommers, & Luhtanen, 2002). In other words, the pursuit of self-esteem may paradoxically lower self-esteem more than it raises it, and lead to a relentless quest for self-esteem.
The pursuit of self-esteem, when it is successful, has emotional and motivational benefits, but both short- and long-term costs, diverting people from fulfilling their fundamental human needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy, and leading to poor self-regulation and mental and physical health (Crocker & Park, 2004a). When they pursue self-esteem, people often create the opposite of what they need to thrive, and inflict costs on others as well. People pursue self-esteem through different avenues, and some of these have higher costs than others, but even “healthier” ways of pursuing self-esteem have costs (Crocker & Park, 2004a).
Emotional and Motivational Benefits and Costs
When people pursue self-esteem, they become ego-involved in events. Success means not only, “I succeeded,” but also, “I am worthy.” Failure means not only “I failed,” but also “I am worthless.” Consequently, when people succeed in a domain in which their self-worth is invested, they experience intense positive emotions, and when they fail they experience intense negative emotion (Crocker & Park, 2004a). These emotions shape motivation; people seek the “high” they get from succeeding at the pursuit of self-esteem, but want to avoid the “low” associated with failure (Wolfe & Crocker, 2003).
Costs for Autonomy When people pursue self-esteem, they are susceptible to stress, pressure, and anxiety because failure suggests they are worthless. As Deci and his colleagues suggest, “The type of ego involvement in which one’s “worth” is on the line—in which one’s self-esteem is contingent upon an outcome— is an example of internally controlling regulation that results from introjection. One is behaving because one feels one has to and not because one wants to, and this regulation is accompanied by the experience of pressure and tension” (Deci, Eghrari, Patrick, & Leone, 1994, p. 121). Students whose self-esteem is contingent on academic performance experience pressure to succeed and lose intrinsic motivation. College students who base their self-esteem on academic performance report experiencing more time pressure, academic struggles, conflicts with professors and teaching assistants, and pressure to make academic decisions than less contingent students (Crocker & Luhtanen, 2003).
Costs for Learning The pursuit of self-esteem interferes with learning and mastery (Covington, 1984). When people have self-validation goals, mistakes, failures, criticism, and negative feedback are self-threats rather than opportunities to learn and improve. Because negative self-relevant information in domains of contingent self-worth implies that one is lacking the quality on which self-esteem is staked, people resist and challenge such information (Baumeister, 1998). If failure or negative feedback cannot be explained away, people search for other ways to restore their self-esteem, for example compensatory self-enhancement or downward comparison. When self-worth is at stake, people want to avoid failure, even if doing so undermines learning (Covington, 1984). For example, students with contingent self-worth in the academic domain report that they would be willing to cheat if they were unable to succeed at a task (Covington, 1984). All of these reactions to self-threat are focused on maintaining, protecting, or restoring self-esteem following negative self-relevant information, rather than learning from the experience.
Costs to Relationships When people pursue self-esteem, relatedness is hindered because they become focused on themselves at the expense of others’ needs and feelings. People pursuing self-esteem want to be superior to others. Consequently, other people become competitors and enemies rather than supports and resources. Whether the response is distancing, avoidance, and withdrawal, or blaming, anger, and aggression, connections with others are sacrificed. These defensive reactions may result in isolation and disconnection from others and hinder the formation of meaningful, authentic, supportive relationships (Crocker & Park, 2004a).
Costs for Self-Regulation The pursuit of self-esteem interferes with self-regulation. Because self-esteem has powerful consequences for emotion, when self-esteem is threatened, people often indulge in immediate impulses to make themselves feel better, giving short-term affect regulation priority over other self-regulatory goals (Tice et al., 2001). Procrastination and self-handicapping, for example, protect self-esteem by creating excuses for failure, but decrease the chances of success. The failures of self-regulation that result from the emotional distress associated with self-esteem threat can result in self-destructive behavior (Baumeister, 1997).
Costs for Mental Health People who tend to approach situations and events with self-esteem goals are high in symptoms of depression (Dykman, 1998). The tendency to overgeneralize negative events to the worth of the entire self, characteristic of people with self-esteem goals, is related to depression and prospectively predicts the development of depressive symptoms (Carver, 1998). Instability of self-esteem caused by success and failure in domains of contingency can contribute to depressive symptoms (Kernis et al., 1998). For example, temporal variability in self-esteem, together with life stress, prospectively predicted the onset of depressive symptoms in a sample of college students (Roberts & Kassel, 1997).
Costs for Physical Health Although research has not directly examined the links, the pursuit of self-esteem likely has long-term costs to physical health. Self-esteem goals may lead to physical health problems through anxiety and stress. People with self-esteem goals tend to be highly anxious (Dykman, 1998), and anxiety has negative effects on health (Suinn, 2001). Stress and anxiety are associated with activation of the pituitary-adrenal-cortical system, which releases corticosteroids from the adrenal cortex (Hellhammer & Wade, 1993), compromising immune system functioning, and resulting in greater susceptibility to illnesses such as upper respiratory infections (Kiecolt-Glaser, Cacioppo, Malarkey, & Glaser, 1992). People who pursue self-esteem also tend to be hostile, especially when they experience threats to self-worth (Kernis, Brown, & Brody, 2000). Hostility is a risk factor for coronary heart disease, and also diminishes immune system functioning (Kiecolt-Glaser et al., 1992). Pursuing self-esteem may lead to physical health problems through unhealthy coping behavior, such as abuse of alcohol, and other health-risk behaviors such as smoking, tanning, excessive dieting, and use of steroids (Leary, Tchividjian, & Kraxberger, 1994).
Conclusion
The pursuit of self-esteem has short-term emotional benefits, and some motivational benefits, but it has both immediate and long-term costs for autonomy, learning, relationships, and mental and physical health. People typically are more aware of the emotional benefits of pursuing self-esteem, and surprisingly unaware of the wide range of costs that pursuing self-esteem has in their lives, and the lives of those around them. The emotional benefits of successful pursuit of self-esteem are intense and immediate, obscuring the longer-term costs, especially the costs to others. Recognizing the costs of pursuing self-esteem can threaten self-esteem, so people may avoid the self-reflection required to fully appreciate those costs. When people are unaware of the costs of their pursuit of self-esteem, they may be caught in a misery of their own making.
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