
How Roy Baumeister challenged the idea of self-esteem (2014) - evilsimon
https://medium.com/matter-archive/the-man-who-destroyed-americas-ego-94d214257b5
======
meesterdude
I skimmed the first quarter of it and read through the rest; a decent read
that touches on a lot of good points.

I found this particularly interesting:

The mistake of many modern feminists, he writes, is that they “look only at
the top of society and draw conclusions about society as a whole. Yes, there
are mostly men at the top. But if you look at the bottom, really at the
bottom, you’ll find mostly men there, too.” His examples: The homeless; the
imprisoned; the people who die at work, 92 percent of whom are male. The
popular modern view is that it’s women who are most poorly valued by culture.
But, ever the contrarian, Baumeister says men are demonstrably “more
expendable than women.”

Also this:

Susan remembers hearing about a theory that the most successful people in life
are those who are still searching for their parents’ unconditional regard.

Sound like any famous (recently deceased) CEO?

~~~
erikb
The idea that men are on the top and the bottom and women somewhere in the
middle is something I also experienced when learning about China. There are so
many men who are completely unable to find a decent job and nor any wife at
all, and on the other end of the spectrum men so rich that one of them has
more money/power than a small country. The point that women completely ignore
the men on the bottom and fight each other about the men on the top, who in
turn have so much choice and so little punishment for bad behaviour that they
don't regard women as breathing human beings, seems to add up to a picture
that looks quite realistic.

It's probably a little too simplified, though. While the percentages vary
between top and bottom men and women, you have both on each level. Beside the
amount of people one would also need to look at the impact on each gender's
life. And the result might still be that a woman on the bottom might have a
much harder life than a man, and a woman at the top might not gain as many
rewards as a man.

It's rather hard to get a complete picture, right?

~~~
saraid216
Notably, the men at the bottom are considered failures for failing to acquire
a wife. That's also one of those things that feminism takes issue with. Poor
males are not saints; they just aren't in a position to actually change the
overall status quo.

If wife acquisition stopped being an indicator of success in China, you'd have
a lot fewer men being considered at the bottom.

~~~
alextgordon
Wife acquisition will continue to be a measure of success so long as China's
sex ratio at birth is 1.1 men to every woman.

No wife means not only a lonely existence, but also no children to care for
you in your old age. If that isn't failure, I don't know what is.

~~~
Omniusaspirer
>No wife means not only a lonely existence, but also no children to care for
you in your old age. If that isn't failure, I don't know what is.

This line of thinking just seems juvenile to me. Do you really believe the
pinnacle of human achievement (and the only one that matters) is being in a
long term relationship and having children?

~~~
wtbob
> Do you really believe the pinnacle of human achievement (and the only one
> that matters) is being in a long term relationship and having children?

Can anyone with any sense of Darwinian evolution _not_ believe that having
children is the goal of life? Can anyone with any emotional sense at all _not_
believe that a lasting relationship with another is not the highest of
pursuits?

~~~
saraid216
Yes and yes.

I'm personally far more interested in passing down a cultural legacy than
squirting my genes into an egg, and I'm more inclined towards raising the
average happiness of the world than just a single relationship.

The funny thing about belief is that it doesn't necessarily extend from basic
facts like having read the same book.

------
edmccard
FTA:

 _" In 1996 Baumeister, now teaching at Case Western Reserve University in
Cleveland, co-authored a review of the literature that concluded that it was,
in fact, 'threatened egotism' that lead to aggression. Evil, he suggested, was
often accompanied by high self-esteem. 'Dangerous people, from playground
bullies to warmongering dictators, consist mostly of those who have highly
favorable views of themselves,' he wrote.

It was an astonishing theory..."_

I can imagine a group of people who might not be astonished; anyone who has
been bullied, and then told they should feel sorry for the bullies because the
bullies had "low self-esteem". At least, when it happened to me, my first
thought was "Low? More like way too high."

~~~
agentutah
It's frustrating to me that people perpetuate the fallacy that high self-
esteem leads to schoolyard bullying. And it's mystifying that some critics of
the self-esteem movement (such as the author of this article) are as strident
in their criticism as they are.

The behavior that bullies exhibit isn't caused by high self-esteem, but by
their need to overcompensate for low self-esteem through anti-social actions.
They see themselves as inadequate, and they see others as threats. When people
have this self-concept, their fight-or-flight response kicks in. Bullies
gravitate toward their "fight" instinct, and social recluses toward their
"flight" instinct. People with truly high self-esteem don't see others as
threats, so they feel no need to treat them as anything other than equals.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett don't feel the need to talk about how rich they
are, or put down people with less money. Similarly, people who are truly
confident don't go around talking about how awesome they are or bullying
others.

~~~
Joeboy
I guess it marks me out as an old person that I find Bill Gates to be a
hilarious example of a non-bully.

------
RodericDay
> As a man of science, he insists his views are influenced only by data...

> Rejecting the feminist notion of patriarchy as a conspiracy theory...

> “Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “I wouldn’t say that. In America there’s a
> third movement, the libertarians, who are trying to reduce government
> involvement and promote freedom. To me, they make a lot of sense.”

> Political correctness upsets Roy Baumeister. He rages against what he sees
> as a left-wing bias in social psychology that means that white prejudice
> against the black community is studied frequently, while inter-minority
> racism is comparatively ignored. Papers that show greed might be in any way
> good are rejected. “If you have a finding that says the conservative
> viewpoint did better, nobody wants to publish it,” he says. Papers that show
> greed might be in any way good are rejected.

It's funny how so many of the people who style themselves as "objective" and
"ideology-free" all fall into the same ideological traps, straw-manning their
opposition and believing what is most convenient for their own in-group.

How can anyone claim with a straight face that America is a nation were inter-
racial violence is understood in terms of its historical roots _too much_ ,
and go on to state that the idea that "greed is good" is demonized?

~~~
philwelch
> How can anyone claim with a straight face that America is a nation were
> inter-racial violence is understood in terms of its historical roots too
> much, and go on to state that the idea that "greed is good" is demonized?

He's not talking about "America", he's talking about "social psychology", or
to be more precise, the predominant academic culture in that field.

------
mcbetz
There is obviously still enough ego in America to claim that C. Rogers was the
first to argue that men are fundamentally good. Frenchman Jean-Jacques
Rousseau formulated that already in the 18th century in his "Second Discours"
\- Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality))

~~~
etqwzutewzu
Rousseau was not French but Swiss. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-
Jacques_Rousseau](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau)

~~~
mcbetz
Right, my bad. I got taken away by his name, location of death and which
country he influenced the most.

------
UhUhUhUh
From a novel I read recently: "Bob was American and called himself a former
American, although such a thing would never happen. He had the fist-line
friendliness typical of this culture, or lack thereof, and the particular and
very irritating sense of specialness that had been infused in several
generations of American children. You had to be special indeed if you were to
play into the American Dream, the very only thing holding this mass of people
together. Be somebody rather than do something. Not that this would not be in
the back of the head of any parent anywhere else in the world, but anywhere
else there was an unconscious sense of healthy resignation. Being was still a
tad more important than becoming. Anywhere else, the condensate of thousands
of dead generations, the wisdom of finitude had not been washed down to
homeopathic levels by the tidal terror and guilt of having left and lost
Mother. A borderline Nation, whose sense of abandonment, emptiness and void
identity had brought about destruction, oral compensation and the art of fake
relationships. But also a knack for pottering stuff."

------
tjradcliffe
This is a nice overview of Baumeister's development as a scientist. I've read
a couple of his books, and really recommend "Evil":
[http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-
Cruelty/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-
Cruelty/dp/0805071652/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424049901&sr=8-1&keywords=evil)
It's interesting to learn a bit about where he came from.

[Edit: irrelevant argument removed]

------
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------
squozzer
We can admit that unbridled self-esteem has created too many people whose
actions may not jibe with their self-image.

What bothers me is that the pendulum will return to the old notion of self-
esteem as a doggie biscuit for obeying one's masters. I'm sure the 1
percenters will like that.

------
vinceguidry
It was an excellent read, I did not know how huge the self-esteem thing was
around the time when I was growing up. Sure explains a lot.

I didn't like the focus on conservative / liberal ideology, I think both of
those are the same kinds of mixed category that self-esteem wound up being. It
surprises me that the author didn't see that connection, though I should
probably cut him some slack as it was written a whole year ago.

~~~
erikb
As far as I understood the author he made the same connection as you.

------
iopq
I'm sorry, I can't click on titles like this anymore. I just can't do it. Is
the article actually good?

~~~
david927
Your instincts are right; it's worth a skip. The article is both poorly
written and largely obtuse.

Its subject argues that promoting self-esteem leads to narcissism, and
therefore is undesirable, while never fully grasping the obvious: that
narcissism, despite appearances, is an artifact of low self-esteem.

~~~
WalterSear
It argues that _attempts to artificially inflate self-esteem_ result in
narcissism.

~~~
david927
That's a spurious distinction because it depends on defining _artificial_.

In the end, the number of people who are truly _inflated_ (which is the
correct term I believe) are so few that this is an argument about over-eating
discussed during a famine.

------
gesman
I love HN comments as a quick way to summarize the essence of good (and often
long, full of fluff) read :)

~~~
MRSallee
I was annoyed this article is so long, but having read it all I can't say
there's much fluff in it.

------
adekok
This should be read as a story about belief versus data. Forty years of _naked
dogma_ resulted in massive social impact. It took a challenger to go through
the data, and show that the ideas weren't true. And from the data, had been
known to be not true for decades.

The social damage done by that dogma is likely severe.

The better approach is a scientific one. Measure. Question. Be sure that your
beliefs are based on evidence, not theory.

~~~
karmacondon
Too bad that these things are very difficult, if not impossible, to do in the
domain of psychology. How do you measure someone's self confidence? Their
degree of narcissism? All you can do is ask them questions, and then argue
over which set of questions are more accurate. There is no way to evaluate
personality traits other than subjective observation.

Data is indeed the answer. Please, for the love of god, measure, question and
quantify. But when it comes to social studies real data is very difficult to
come by. Self reporting is the antithesis of empiricism. Baumeister does good
work, given the field that he works in, and his ideas are powerful and useful.
But at the end of the day, it's just a matter of social fashion. People prefer
his ideas, or other ideas, or whatever suits them at the time. Anyone can come
up with an experiment that shows that one psychological disposition is
superior to another, or that kids should be taught this over that. These
things change with the times. By comparison, F will always equal ma. There's
no way to argue with real science. Everything else, is open to debate.

~~~
adekok
> Self reporting is the antithesis of empiricism.

Not entirely. The article talks about this. The _theory_ was that low self-
esteem led to violence. The _facts_ are that self-reports of high self-esteem
are correlated with increased violence.

You might disregard the "self report" aspect of the studies. But the main
conclusion is that the original theory is wrong.

~~~
karmacondon
This was addressed in the article:

 _For Branden, the violent people Baumeister wrote about might have appeared
confident, but underneath all that bluster they actually had low self-
esteem.“One does not need to be a trained psychologist to know that some
people with low self-esteem strive to compensate for their deficit by
boasting, arrogance, and conceited behavior,” he wrote._

It's all a game of he said/she said. The bottom line is that the human mind is
opaque. There's nothing easier than theorizing about something that can't be
measured, or even directly observed.

~~~
adekok
When something is unmeasurable, it's more properly placed in the realm of
"magic" or maybe "philosophy".

If people have _unmeasurable_ low self-esteem, than the original theory is
_unfalsifiable_ , which means it's outside of the realm of science.

Or, we can talk about reality. We can treat people like black boxes, and
correlate their claims with their actions. This is called "psychology".

The human mind is nowhere near opaque.

[http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-
movies/](http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/)

With some work, a computer can determine the video a person is watching in an
MRI. It's not perfect, but it's amazingly close.

Saying "the human mind is opaque" is wishful thinking. It's magical thinking
that somehow people (and thought) is different from everything else in the
world.

It's not. We're meat puppets.

------
drcomputer
Measurements that are qualitative are much more tricky to deal with than
quantitative measurements.

When I read words like 'hollow self esteem' I feel like I am reading a poem,
not scientific data. Hollow self esteem means 'self esteem that lacks social
validation', but when we define self esteem clearly in terms of social
validation with relations that show the distribution of 'when the social
validation occurs in terms of time' and 'how much social validation is given'
versus 'how much social manipulative ability is granted' then people in
society start to become definable and moveable like machines. What is the
point of existing as a human being when life can be plotted?

If I define my self esteem through a single data point in my past, can you
really compare that to someone who defines their self esteem by each day as it
unfolds? Can you really measure self esteem when everyone's self esteem is
dependent on comparisons of self analysis versus social analysis?

Culture defines culture. Social groups define social groups dynamically as the
group is processing and composing information. Data is almost the same as
theory when it comes to psychology. I personally find it all ridiculous and
believe that people need to have balance between the methods of science and
understanding and seeking their own personal truths. People have the potential
to be more than what language and mathematics can convey, but this makes many
people uncomfortable, because it's not definable. What isn't definable always
seems to get filtered through a lens of religious, dogmatic belief in the
scientific community. If it can't be measured, it doesn't exist. But it does
exist. The problem is that scientific, mathematical language does not measure
the effect of itself.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
You claim that you know that something that can't be measured does exist. If
you haven't just made up that claim, that implies that you have somehow
detected the existence of that thing. What you might not be aware of is that
in the eyes of a scientist that makes you into a "measuring apparatus" for the
thing that you claim cannot be measured. In order for a scientist to consider
something unmeasurable, it cannot have any influence on the natural world, as
that would be a measurable effect. Making you utter or type a claim about the
existence of something is an influence on the natural world that can be
measured, so if you making that claim is actually causally connected to the
thing (as opposed to made up by you), that would make the thing measurable.

~~~
drcomputer
I don't think you understand that you can't control what information and
processes are dynamically influenced and what components are static and
unchanging. The methodology of science can be subject to the same level of
analytical inspection and rigor that the scientific methodology itself
upholds.

You hold science as a constant and shape the world around that lens. What
happens when science starts to take itself apart, when it starts to redefine
itself, analyze itself, study itself?

Keep down-voting me if you like. All I really know is that I have more
questions than I have answers, and I don't think that is a bad thing.

~~~
jonex
Science on science, it's a thing. Also named Theory of Science, it studies
Science from a philosophical view and brings up questions like "If we have
measured something to be the same 10000 times, can we be sure it will be same
the 10001st time?"

What happens when you do that? Well, for me what happens is the realization of
the value of being pragmatic. Truth is, like Descartes said, we can't really
know anything but our own existence, and depending on your definition of
existence, even that can be questioned. But what is the value in that? Now
when I know I know nothing, is it a good basis to live my life upon?

My answer to that is no, it's not a good basis to stand on. Instead I choose
to approach it pragmatically, or as an engineer if you prefer, "I accept my
perception of reality* as real" and "a useful fact is information that can
somehow be used to predict the future"

But then, I tend to like answers more than questions, I guess it comes
included with my engineering degree.

* Not meaning that everything I perceive in a given moment has to be real, rather that my understanding of the world is my best guess of how things are.

~~~
drcomputer
I don't understand why you replied to me.

