Theory of Social Psychology in Self Esteem

Theory of Social Psychology in Self Esteem

Theory of social comparison

Self esteem refers to a person’s overall sense of self-worth or personal value mostly expressed as a personal trait. It has deep relation with a person’s consciousness and beliefs and affects individual’s behaviors feelings, thoughts and actions.  It’s an essential trait for healthy development and human survival
. It incorporates self respect and self confidence as an inner drive to bring self value in an individual psychology.

            Self esteem is a deeper feeling of superiority or inferiority in a social setting. People with low self esteem are more likely to feel discouraged in their endeavors as they lack self regard and usually fall short of their potential. In the contrary people with too much self esteem induce inner self love and usually fail to learn from failures. People with self esteem find it easy to handle rejection and criticism and find fulfilling happiness even in discouraging situations. While a low esteem person feels the impact of rejection it’s psychologically concluded as a result of low self confidence and emotional orientations in an individua (Berkowitz & Anderson, 1978).l

            The social problem of self esteem is the most widely theorized in social psychology as it affects humans on all social settings. Humans may underperform for lack of self empowerment and thus opinions towards success are usually shaped by self esteem. Self esteem can be high, medium or low depending on the qualitative empirical measure for an individual. High and low self esteems are usually undesirable as it results in emotions and socially harmful traits since the optimum performance falls under medium self esteem (ellison, 1976). People with low self esteem usually underperform as they focus more on not making mistakes in life rather than the way forward, this usually leads to negative outcomes and depression. In the contrary individuals with high self esteem usually focus on growth and improvement and are less discouraged with failures.

            Individuals with low self esteem are more troubled by failure and therefore tend to exaggerate events as being negative; they end up becoming pessimistic in life. They usually turn antisocial as they lack interpersonal confidence, usually this results to shyness, feeling of awkwardness and lack of ability to express them.  One of the most researched areas of self esteem is in schools, usually a research on young children who usually become affected by low self esteem (diane frey, 1989). A research on  children suffering low self esteem revealed feeling of insecurity, unhappiness, depression, lack of confidence, hostility and underperforming in class. All this was usually attributed to punishment from the parents or teachers and the lack of empowering such children to discover their potential. Children who usually underperformed in class further suffered low self esteem by lack of answering questions they out rightly knew as they usually think they may be wrong (suls & wheeler, 2000).

 The need for one to have optimum self esteem is a move to develop individuals with integrity, pride in their achievements, the willingness to take risks, ability to handle criticism, self motivation, loving and lovable and socially healthy. It therefore enables one to experience himself or herself competently in order to cope with challenges, one is thus worth the happiness.

Festingers social comparison theory states that individuals determine their own social and personal worth based on how we evaluate against others. It explains how individuals evaluate themselves against in their opinions and abilities in order to reduce uncertainty in oneself... As a result, individuals are constantly making self and other evaluations on domains like richness, beauty, intelligence and success. Festinger their abilities and opinions hypothesizes that there exists the drive for oneself to evaluate opinions and abilities in the human organism. People usually do this by comparing with others as there is no non social means to do so. As a result the tendency for one to compare himself or herself with another person decreases as the difference between his opinion and ability and owns one increase. Festinger argues that holding of inaccurate appraisals of one s abilities can be punishing or even fatal; in many situations, therefore the need to know one limited by the impossibility to determine opinions or abilities in physical world motivates people to compare themselves t with others (diane frey, 1989) (Lange, Kruglanski, & Higgins, 2012).

Festinger further hypothesizes that there is always s a unidirectional drive upward in the situation where abilities are largely absent in the individuals opinions. He believes that if persons who are very divergent from one’s own opinion are perceive d as different from oneself on attributes consistent with the divergence the comparison narrows becoming stronger. In absence of a comparing factor individuals will pick other similar comparisons, in the case of ability, a person will prefer a better comparison. The opinion of a divergent person becomes deficient of useful information as it lacks accuracy henceforth.

He puts it that in any society there exists no social restraints that make it hard for one to change ability, however these restraints lack in the opinions of individuals. Continued comparison leads to hostility and results in unpleasant consequences, in effect, any factors increasing the importance of some particular group as a comparing factor for an opinion or ability increases the pressure towards uniformity on the opinion within a group. When there is a range of opinion or ability in a group, the relative strength of the three manifestations of pressures toward uniformity will be different for those who are close to the mode of the group than those who are distant from the mode.  Those close to the  mode of the  group will have stronger tendencies to change the  positions of others, relatively weaker  tendencies to narrow the  range  of comparison, and much  weaker  tendencies to  change their position compared to those who  are distant from  the mode of the group. Therefore the amount of ideology assimilation varies according to the relevance, the importance and the attraction to the group which one is comparing with (Deutsch & Krauss, 1965).

 According to the social comparison theory, people compare themselves to others in a motivational consideration.  The inner desire for one to discover his or herself drives one to seek informative characteristics about their abilities. However as the objective standard are not always available people fall on social comparison with others,  comparing one s abilities and opinions with others is usually more convincing to an individual. In the contrary the majority of individual does not seek the correct feedback from their comparisons but rather try to create a positive self image. As a result one may compare himself with downward comparisons; in such a situation the individual may see his or her failures as successes. The desire to gain a comparison with someone who is higher than you in opinion and ability can in most cases be used as a basis to gaining information on how to advance. The social comparison theory can be seen as a strategic process to gain a motive; it thus achieves the goals of self enhancement, self improvement and self evaluation (Berkowitz & Anderson, 1978).

The virtue of comparison arises from logical considerations where a given ability is portrayed when it refers to its superiority when compared to others, e.g. A person being referred as brilliant simply means that he is brilliant than the others,  when one says somebody is attractive then it means that that person is attractive than the others. From this notion it becomes crucial to make a comparison for a target with a relevant group to make a correct interpretation e.g.  If somebody hears a statement that “Alex is heavy” one may interpret that Alex weighs well over 180 pounds, however in the contrary Alex may be a toddler who weighs 20 pounds.

Comparisons enable one to understand information in a more socially acceptable way. As most issues concerned are social therefore it becomes hard for one to get to the in-depth of understanding a particular parameter to prove something. For example terming an individual as physically fit may require one to get the heart beat, the weight of the individual, the height, the body fat content and so on, this rather becomes a complex endeavor. As a result from the norms its understood physically that individuals who have the  majority of desirable characteristics  are rare hence comparing from a pool of many who don’t bear such characteristics we may term such an individual as physically fit without going to the lab (Lange, Kruglanski, & Higgins, 2012).

People usually use comparative information to manifest the efficiency advantage of comparative knowledge. A comparative measure is less involving as few or less parameters are to be considered when making a comparison e.g.  A research that was done involved students.  To do so, participants were given a pair        of pictures and were asked either to compare or to describe them before they received the critical judgment task. Participants who compared the two pictures were likely to rely more heavily on comparisons in the subsequent critical judgment task than participants who described the two pictures.  In this critical judgment task, participants were asked to judge a fictitious city on several dimensions (e.g., number of inhabitants, number of students). The results indicate that comparative processing is indeed more efficient. Participants who were induced to make these judgments in a more comparative manner were faster in making the critical judgments and had more resources available for the processing of a secondary task (Edwards, 1974).

People will usually select comparison standards that are similar to them, generally the desire to maintain a positive self view might lead one to select inferior standards. A comparison with an upper standard will make one to improve as he or she aims to achieve higher in self improvement, such an individual is rather motivated and usually achieves positive results. However an upward comparison   may not necessarily be positive as one may overstrain him or herself leading to threatening one self. 

Festingers theory of social comparison can be used to demystify and affect self esteem. The social comparison theory relates a person self esteem in his or her current situation that portrays dissatisfaction. As a result the situation compels on e to evaluate himself or herself with another person to gain satisfaction. Generally humans desire to achieve more, become better and be the best in the world. However one can’t be the best in everything and therefore comparison comes as a deep feeling in the inner of a person to achieve or do better, however it can be used to gain a state of acceptance of the situation at hand (Deutsch & Krauss, 1965).

A research conducted in a certain school involved a poor performing school. Generally the school being an underperformer lacked the moralization to achieve higher and therefore the students suffered low self esteem in the presence of other academic giants, when interviewed the student said that they were never proud of their school and thus when asked about the school where they learn they usually refused to say or gave the name of another school. This case is an upward comparison that’s results in low self esteem top the students as they feel they are inferior to the other students in other schools, the students feel that they can’t perform and accept the situation as it is. They are always discouraged by being at the bottom; however furthering the research several observations were observed. In the coming year several new private and government schools were opened. After the examinations these new schools were all at the bottom of the performance list, none had defeated the school under research; however the school under research had defeated none of their usual rivals. In a measure to achieve satisfaction the school under research compared itself with the new schools; the fact that none of the new schools had defeated them gave them confidence to perform and they were happy to defeat someone. This translated to raised self esteem as the school opted for a downward comparison; this instead gives a false feeling of self performance. The following year the school defeated four of their usual rivals signifying improved performance due to the raised self esteem (Deutsch & Krauss, 1965) (Lange, Kruglanski, & Higgins, 2012) (ellison, 1976).

An individual usually sees himself or herself as inferior when he compares himself with an upward comparative, he or she thus loses the self esteem. Generally people will tend to compare themselves with people who they share similarities with. From a research conducted it was revealed that breast cancer patients who compared themselves with the healthy majority suffered stress and depression, they were usually dissatisfied, and however they were few. In the contrary, majority of breast cancer patients compared themselves with the less fortunate than themselves, as a result they felt that they were better off and this improved their self regard boosting their self esteem.

 Self esteem needs to be boosted for one to achieve self acceptance, however we may not all be perfect and thus on e may feel underprivileged for lack of skills or a character he desires, making an upward comparison may challenge one to achieve the best, however this is not the case in the event as some may become discouraged and end up developing low self esteem. As a result the motivation to achieve fades and one becomes less aggressive in desire for a goal. A re-evaluation of oneself will see one boost his or her self esteem by making a relevant comparative group usually the same or lower class. In a research, the media was observed for its influence on the audience. The use of slim models in commercials resulted in the society perceiving slim as desirable, as a result the young ladies started trending to a slimmer generation to gain acceptance as portrayed in the media (Lange, Kruglanski, & Higgins, 2012). Generally, slim might not be what the society wants, however since models serve as role models and regarded as those of class brought the ideology of upward comparison.  Ladies thus made efforts to remain slim to be like the role models, this rather raises their self esteem that they are superior like the models too (ellison, 1976).

 The theory of social comparison reveals a psychological process of how people feel and act to maintain the best of their inner self. Social comparison can therefore be viewed as a tool to achieve success as well s a tool to achieve a raise d self esteem. It seems clear that, particularly for a process that is as ubiquitous as social comparison, a more encompassing perspective that integrates cognitive’ motivational and affective influences are needed. Self esteem is a tool to social change and vital for day to day living, social comparison therefore is inevitable for the best of one self

References

Berkowitz, L., & Anderson, N. H. (1978). Cognitive theories in social psychology : papers from Advances in experimental social psychology. New York: Academic Press.

Deutsch, M., & Krauss, R. M. (1965). Theories in social psychology. New York: Basic Books.

diane frey, c. j. (1989). enhancing self esteem. muncie ind: accelerated pub.

Edwards, W. T. (1974). Social psychology : theories and discussions. London: Longman.

ellison, c. w. (1976). SELF ESTEEM. oklahoma city: southwestern press for christian association.

Feldman, R. S. (1985). Social psychology : theories, research, and applications. New York : McGraw-Hil.

Lange, P. A., Kruglanski, A. W., & Higgins, E. T. (2012). Handbook of theories of social psychology Volume 2. Los Angeles: SAGE.

suls, j. m., & wheeler, l. (2000). HANDBOOK ON SOCIAL COMPARISON; THEORY OF RESEARCH. new york: kluwer pub.