Thought Paper #1
Nolan McGreer
Student ID #100963043
We all have certain perceptions of ourselves ranging from physical appearance to skill sets in life. The idea of self-esteem helps us create an image of the perfect human being in terms of worth, the person everyone wants to be. Self-esteem is the idea of how we feel about ourselves and how much we feel we are worth. Be it physical appearance or personality, we are constantly looking at ourselves in comparison to others. The term “Ideal Self” is the idea of the perfect human being. It’s who we strive to be and without it, the theory of self-esteem wouldn’t exist.
The Ideal Self will change throughout our lives because we never know who we are. The “Actual
Self” helps us define who we are. The Actual Self is who we actually are and it will change numerous times. The Actual Self is someone we’ll change in order to feel better about ourselves and increase our self worth. The ideas of the Actual Self and the Ideal Self are the foundations of self-esteem. Self-esteem is broken down into two categories; High and Low. High self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves with a positive reaction, and Low self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves with a negative reaction. Blended with the points of the Actual self and the Ideal
Self, people will come up with with the image of the Ideal Self while looking at the Actual Self.
They want to see how they add up to this person, and in turn change something about themselves, or remain the same. Although self-esteem isn’t the idea that we will change ourselves, I believe it is a natural response of Low self-esteem. And if after the comparison you remain the same of your feelings in regards to your characteristics, you have developed a healthy self-esteem. The effects of High and Low self-esteem can vary, but usually are the same for everyone. Results of High self-esteem can range from in-heightened physical appearance too acting in a more positive tone. Results of Low self-esteem can range from lowered physical appearance too being shut out from society.
The theory of self-esteem is a complex one at best. There are many ways to think about it and a particular article I found tackles that point. A study titled “Collective Self-Esteem and In-group
Bias” by Jennifer Crocker and Riia Luhtanen . This particular article focuses on more then just the basic explanation of self-esteem, as it really tries to make the connection between a social group and self-esteem. The study proposes that there is a second type of self-esteem, collective self-esteem. The experiment implemented in this article took a group of 82 students and put them through tests in order to measure traits of personal and collective self esteem. Subjects were split into two groups and were told they had the choice to interact with other members of their group if they choose after the tests. The tests were to measure how high or low someones collective self esteem was, and were then evaluated on their interaction within their groups. Those willing to interact with other test subjects were given a high rating in terms of the validity that they had high collective self-esteem, and those with low collective self-esteem were shown to have little interaction. Therefore the conclusion was made that the more collective self-esteem someone has, it is because of their willingness to interact with others of a same demographic. In this study the main demographic was college students. Validity of these points are proven by the authors.
Collective self-esteem is the idea people develop an image of themselves (that of worth) based on their interactions within a group. The more a person interacts, the more the image of worth increases. But the question that needs to be asked is why? Why is it with the more you interact with a group the better you feel? The authors deduced that although they are part of the same
