|
In 1890,
Self-Esteem was first mentioned by William James in what has become known as
the first American textbook on psychology. Self-esteem is now known as the
oldest component of the social sciences in the United States.
After James
introduced self-esteem, it was put on the backburner so to speak, when psychodynamic
theorists started exploring self-esteem once again. The two most recognizable
for their work are Alfred Adler (1927) and Karen Horney (1937). It is
believed that the social sciences were not explored as readily during this
gap of time due to the exploration of behaviorism (Mruk,
1999).
In the 1960’s,
a greater interest in self-esteem emerged with the forerunners Coopersmith, Rogers, Rosenberg, and Branden.
Coopersmith (1959, 1967)
explored self-esteem from a learning theories perspective. He defined
self-esteem as an evaluation of self; the approval or disapproval belief of
capability, significant, successful, worthy subjective experience conveyed
through verbal or overt behaviors (Mruk, 2006).
Rogers (1951, 1961) took on the humanistic perspective
exploring therapeutic possibilities which included how self-esteem influenced
“living a healthy, authentic, or optimal existence (p 4 Mruk,
2006).”
Rosenberg (1965) defined self-esteem as a positive or
negative attitude toward a particular object (the self). He believed that
high self-esteem meant that a person believed they are good enough, they are
worthy, respect him or herself, and that they are not superior to others.
Also, that they had personal dignity. Rosenberg
developed the most recognizable self-esteem survey. This consists of 10 items
on a likert scale to produce a unidimensional
global self-esteem measure. The purpose was to see if an individual endorsed
high or low self-esteem.
Branden (1969) defined
self-esteem as a sense of personal efficacy and worth with the ability to
cope in challenging situations. Self-esteem is the sum of self-efficacy and
self-respect. Self-efficacy is the confidence a person possess in their
abilities and accomplishments. Self-respect is a person’s confidence in themselves to be happy with their achievements and
accomplishments. Someone who has high self-esteem is competent to live and
worthy of living. Someone who has low self-esteem does not respect themselves
or have confidence in themselves. Branden also discusses
the idea that a person needs self-esteem in order to be healthy
psychologically.
From the late
1980s to mid 1990s became known as the “self-esteem movement”. Attention was
brought to the public eye that their may be a link between self-esteem and major
social problems. It was believed that those people with low self-esteem are a
burden to society and that something needed to be done to assist these people
if their society wanted to transform (Self-esteem, 2008). Because of this
light brought to the public, there was wide support from the government
backing research on the topic of self-esteem. Many self-help books were
published and other forms of media also were produced during this movement.
Self-esteem was brought into the educational setting with programs aimed to
improve self-esteem in children.
Previous and
formerly used definitions consisted of different aspects of self-esteem.
However, they are all lacking important aspects that Mruk
has included (2006). The previous definitions do not have room for a person
to obtain characteristics of different parts of self-esteem. Previously a
person is either considered high self-esteem or low self-esteem with no in
between. While some definitions bring up different components, they have not
been developed fully. Mruk has developed
self-esteem on a continuum with four main components; worthiness based
self-esteem, low self-esteem, high self-esteem, and competence based
self-esteem.
Self-esteem
remains to be one of the most researched topics in the field of psychology
and is most commonly associated with many disorders.
|
