The empty promise of empty praise
Weak link found between self-esteem and academic achievement

Whether attempting to raise students’ academic achievement or keep teenagers from engaging in risky behaviors, one common strategy has been to make young people feel better about themselves in the hope that the change will lead to more positive outcomes in their lives. Unfortunately, there’s little evidence that a focus on self-esteem has an impact on children’s behavior, according to “Exploding the Self-Esteem Myth,” a new review of research on the topic that appears in the January 2005 issue of Scientific American.

The four authors conclude their analysis this way: “We have found little to indicate that indiscriminately promoting self-esteem in today’s children or adults, just for being themselves, offers society any compensatory benefits beyond the seductive pleasure it brings to those engaged in the exercise.” The authors more specifically discuss research on school-related topics such as academics and popularity; risky behaviors such as sex, drugs and alcohol; and bullying. One challenge, the report points out, was finding studies of self-esteem that use objective measures—rather than reports by the subjects themselves—to untangle the connection between self-esteem and other outcomes.

Among the authors’ findings:

• Raising self-esteem does not foster academic achievement. One large study found only a very weak connection between students’ self-esteem in 10th grade and their academic achievement in 12th grade; the same was true of the connection between academic achievement in 10th grade and self-esteem two years later.
  
• Another study looked at the link between self-esteem and popularity in school. The researchers asked hundreds of ninth-graders to nominate other students as most-liked and least-liked, and they found that the rankings had no correlation with self-esteem scores.
  
• Likewise with teenagers’ out-of-school behavior, the authors conclude that there’s no support for the idea that low self-esteem is linked to more or earlier sexual activity or to drinking and drug use. “If anything,” they write, “those with high self-esteem are less inhibited, more willing to disregard risks and more prone to engage in sex.” The authors do point out that bad sexual experiences and unwanted pregnancies appear to lower self-esteem.
  
• Bullying and aggressive behavior are another area where the evidence seems to contradict some widely held beliefs. Rather than suffering from low self-esteem, students who bully other youngsters “generally hold favorable and perhaps even inflated view of themselves,” the authors write. Bullies report less anxiety and are more sure of themselves than other children. Similar findings hold true with violent adults, they add.
  
• Self-esteem also turns out to have a surprising influence on a person’s love life. One study showed that people who think highly of themselves are more likely than others to respond to problems in their relationships by ending the relationship and seeking other partners.

In the end, the authors ask, should parents, teachers and therapists seek to boost self-esteem? Clearly, the evidence indicates that an isolated and excessive focus in this area is not productive. That doesn’t mean, however, that positive self-esteem isn’t helpful in some areas. They point out, for example, that it improves persistence in the face of failure, that it can help people perform better in a group than those with low self-esteem, and that poor self-image is a risk factor for certain eating disorders such as bulimia.

The authors also manage to work in a word that in and of itself makes the article worth reading: “floccinaucinihilipilification,” which means “the action or habit of estimating as worthless.”

The complete article is available online at www.sciam.com.