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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Sunday, April 20, 2003 :::
A couple of researchers did a study on the impact of self-esteem on performance: (Link from Joanne Jacobs, whom I found through the Bitch Girls, whom I found somewhere.)
The pair had asked a professor to send weekly e-mail messages to students of his who had done poorly on their first exam for the class. Each missive included a review question. In addition, one-third of the students, chosen at random, also received a message -- advice to study, for example -- suggesting that how well they did in the course was under their own control. The other third received the review question plus a "You're too smart to get a D!" pep talk aimed at raising their self-esteem, which everyone knows boosts academic performance.
Oops.
Compared with the other e-mail recipients, the D and F students who got the self-esteem injection performed notably worse on later tests.
If they verified whether the messages designed to enhance self-esteem actually did so, the story doesn't say. That said, I can't say I'm surprised by those results. As George Will once said, "dispelling 'self-esteem' is often a prerequisite for self-improvement."
There's some more interesting stuff in that study, though, such as:
O[ne solid link] does seem to exist between higher self-esteem and performance. The higher your opinion of yourself, the more likely you are to persist in the face of failure. It is left as an exercise for the reader to decide whether this is a desirable character trait. Sometimes, isn't it better to just cut and run?
Like almost everything, it can be taken too far, but I'd have to say persistence is generally a good thing.
Self-esteem proponents have also fallen into the trap of taking people at their word. People high in self-esteem report that they're more likable and have better relationships than do those with low self-esteem. But "this is true mainly in their own minds," says Prof. Baumeister, a psychology professor at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Objective measures typically find the opposite, undercutting the claim that high self-esteem brings superior social skills.
Pitfalls of overconfidence are well-known in my field. In other fields, it's been ascertained that the least competent people tend to rate themselves higher than do the mediocre, and often higher than the best.
Incidentally, doesn't Google rock? I remembered having seen that George Will column and those studies back when they were relatively current, and I was able to find them without much trouble several years later. How cool is that?
::: posted by Steven at 3:44 AM
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