How Roy Baumeister challenged the idea of self-esteem (2014)
medium.com
medium.com
I found this particularly interesting:
The mistake of many modern feminists, he writes, is that they “look only at the top of society and draw conclusions about society as a whole. Yes, there are mostly men at the top. But if you look at the bottom, really at the bottom, you’ll find mostly men there, too.” His examples: The homeless; the imprisoned; the people who die at work, 92 percent of whom are male. The popular modern view is that it’s women who are most poorly valued by culture. But, ever the contrarian, Baumeister says men are demonstrably “more expendable than women.”
Also this:
Susan remembers hearing about a theory that the most successful people in life are those who are still searching for their parents’ unconditional regard.
Sound like any famous (recently deceased) CEO?
It's probably a little too simplified, though. While the percentages vary between top and bottom men and women, you have both on each level. Beside the amount of people one would also need to look at the impact on each gender's life. And the result might still be that a woman on the bottom might have a much harder life than a man, and a woman at the top might not gain as many rewards as a man.
It's rather hard to get a complete picture, right?
If wife acquisition stopped being an indicator of success in China, you'd have a lot fewer men being considered at the bottom.
No wife means not only a lonely existence, but also no children to care for you in your old age. If that isn't failure, I don't know what is.
This line of thinking just seems juvenile to me. Do you really believe the pinnacle of human achievement (and the only one that matters) is being in a long term relationship and having children?
Can anyone with any sense of Darwinian evolution not believe that having children is the goal of life? Can anyone with any emotional sense at all not believe that a lasting relationship with another is not the highest of pursuits?
I'm personally far more interested in passing down a cultural legacy than squirting my genes into an egg, and I'm more inclined towards raising the average happiness of the world than just a single relationship.
The funny thing about belief is that it doesn't necessarily extend from basic facts like having read the same book.
I would also personally argue that once you gain the ability to modify the human genome any desire for classical evolution is deeply flawed. Relationships are largely a holdover from the evolutionary need to reproduce, although obviously it's good for our happiness and emotional state to satisfy those desires in our current form.
I can. Life doesn't have a goal. It's not some kind of plan. It just happens.
Can anyone with any emotional sense at all not believe that a lasting relationship with another is not the highest of pursuits?
I can. A lasting relationship with another? A fucking guinea pig can do that. Humans are capable of so much more.
To state the obvious, I am kinda disagreeable to this presumption.
Similarly, he's not just talking about a "long term relationship", but a much more economic arrangement where one's wife fulfills your needs for companionship and breeding in return for the bread you win. Unsurprisingly, this is something that many modern Chinese women have started balking at.
Or was your comment linked to that in some way?
From what I've seen and heard, getting a wife was the goal, and since women had actual choices, they'd be choosing someone with a stable job, apartment, etc., so the men feel compelled to get those things. They're not accidentally tripping over wives; they're actively seeking them out.
I would agree that marriage is more important to Chinese men than to western men. The idea of marriage is also different, though.
Additionally, many (most?) feminists believe in "intersectionality", the belief that sexism, racism, classism, ableism, and heterosexism act in intersecting ways, and that all need to be dismantled together (for instance, this is why most feminists support reform of the US prison system, even though this is something that primarily effects men). Dismantling these oppressive systems would very much help those on the bottom.
The exclusive-focus-on-more-white-woman-as-CEOs brand of feminism is actually a minority of feminists (although they seem to get the most coverage in the popular press) and is widely critiqued within feminism.
Yes, of course they intersect, at their core they're all the same thing; judgements made based on human traits.
What does it matter whether people are judged based on gender, skin colour, etc... ? The point is, the judgements are being made whilst we build a picture of the world around us. The danger only comes when irrational traits are associated, when those being judged are not careful about self-fulfilling prophecies, and when people forget that stereotypes are a shortcut, never the whole picture.
https://rancom.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/why-no-one-should-us...
It has the double-barreled utility of both sufficiently explaining the term I wanted to introduce to you and provide a reasonable critique of it at the same time.
How about we drop that stupid feminism label and movement and start to actually talk about the issues at hand?
That's consistent with analysis by Howard Wainer[1] on gender differences:
"[I]t has been well established that there is an overabundance of boys at the high end of test score distributions. [S]ome observers have used such results to make inferences about differences in intelligence between the sexes. [H]owever, most enlightened investigators have seen that it is not necessarily a difference in level but a difference in variance that separates the sexes. Thus, while there are more boys at the high end, there are also more at the low end."
[1] The Most Dangerous Equation http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8863.pdf
BBC correspondent Robert Peston made a short radio documentary http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nh06m about this after being left with the same impression after interviewing many successful business people as part of his job. There's also the idea that the experience of an (in some way) absent parent during childhood is strongly correlated with narcissism, which in turn is strongly correlated with success in the entertainment industry. (I can't find a good link which discusses this atm.)
This is a critique that a lot of feminists make as well. Google the phrase 'white feminism' to see
If this is a reference to Steve Jobs it arguues with great strength against your point. Jobs was raised by a working class couple who adopted him. From reading Isaacson's biography they seem to have been proud but bemused parents. Comparing Jobs to his biological sister (His grad student parents later married and had her.) and his adoptive sister would suggest heredity is pretty powerful.
Too bad the title is really off-putting. Sounds like any clickbait website, not a good journalistic piece.
And see themselves as deserving of the same. As entitled to it. Without doing the 20 years of 16 hour days which helped the CEO get there.
There's a large amount of narcissism in such declarations.
(for anyone reading, I'm actually very interested in reading a critique. I'm not just passively calling out the parent post.)
That is one theory, there are other theories. You can poke holes in this theory, but it's not just a handwave that feminists haven't thought about this or recognized that men are disposable. I mean, feminism knows about this thing called "war." My major problem with feminism is that there is a large gap between theory and activism which results in time and energy being spent on CEO equality and ignoring feminism's own arguments about how mistreated many males are in the lower rungs of society. But that is a problem with practice, not theory.
So perhaps Baumeister's essay wouldn't be a revelation to some feminists. But is Baumeister wrong? Perhaps I am missing the difference. The main difference seems to be the feminist take is more normative.
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http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm
" The phrase “Be a man” is not as common as it once was, but there is still some sense that manhood must be earned. Every adult female is a woman and is entitled to respect as such, but many cultures withhold respect from the males until and unless the lads prove themselves. This is of course tremendously useful for the culture, because it can set the terms by which males earn respect as men, and in that way it can motivate the men to do things that the culture finds productive.
Some sociological writings about the male role have emphasized that to be a man, you have to produce more than you consume. That is, men are expected, first, to provide for themselves: If somebody else provides for you, you’re less than a man. Second, the man should create some additional wealth or surplus value so that it can provide for others in addition to himself. These can be his wife and children, or others who depend on him, or his subordinates, or even perhaps just paying taxes that the government can use. Regardless, you’re not a man unless you produce at that level.
Again, I’m not saying men have it worse than women. There are plenty of problems and disadvantages that cultures put on women. My point is just that cultures find men useful in these very specific ways. Requiring the man to earn respect by producing wealth and value that can support himself and others is one of these. Women do not face this particular challenge or requirement."
I think feminism having a theory doesn't amount to much in itself. Religion also has a theory that "explains" the world. But it isn't science. Neither is feminism (in most cases).
I'm also amused because of course it is in the women's power to change men's behavior - simply change who they mate with. If they prefer mating with the most powerful men, men will compete to be the most powerful men. It's not the patriarchy creating that, it's women's choices. (Although it's possible that women's choices make biological sense, but I've never seen a feminist who cared much for evolution theory).
Another interesting thought which I think is from Nassim Taleb: religions did a lot for peace by mandating monogamy and making sure more men got access to a womb that way.
By the way, I meant normative means they want to change it, whereas positivist would be merely describing a system. Baumeister seems more positivist.
I definitely agree that Baumeister didn't engage with feminist talk on this issue. I think he was responding to public discourses on issues like wage gaps, which don't necessarily correspond to more nuanced feminist narratives.
"In 1996 Baumeister, now teaching at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, co-authored a review of the literature that concluded that it was, in fact, 'threatened egotism' that lead to aggression. Evil, he suggested, was often accompanied by high self-esteem. 'Dangerous people, from playground bullies to warmongering dictators, consist mostly of those who have highly favorable views of themselves,' he wrote.
It was an astonishing theory..."
I can imagine a group of people who might not be astonished; anyone who has been bullied, and then told they should feel sorry for the bullies because the bullies had "low self-esteem". At least, when it happened to me, my first thought was "Low? More like way too high."
The behavior that bullies exhibit isn't caused by high self-esteem, but by their need to overcompensate for low self-esteem through anti-social actions. They see themselves as inadequate, and they see others as threats. When people have this self-concept, their fight-or-flight response kicks in. Bullies gravitate toward their "fight" instinct, and social recluses toward their "flight" instinct. People with truly high self-esteem don't see others as threats, so they feel no need to treat them as anything other than equals.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett don't feel the need to talk about how rich they are, or put down people with less money. Similarly, people who are truly confident don't go around talking about how awesome they are or bullying others.
Have you ever read about Bill Gates in his glory days? He was basically Steve Jobs without the fashion sense, but with the complete and total ass-holery (maybe not to the same utmost extent though).
> Rejecting the feminist notion of patriarchy as a conspiracy theory...
> “Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “I wouldn’t say that. In America there’s a third movement, the libertarians, who are trying to reduce government involvement and promote freedom. To me, they make a lot of sense.”
> Political correctness upsets Roy Baumeister. He rages against what he sees as a left-wing bias in social psychology that means that white prejudice against the black community is studied frequently, while inter-minority racism is comparatively ignored. Papers that show greed might be in any way good are rejected. “If you have a finding that says the conservative viewpoint did better, nobody wants to publish it,” he says. Papers that show greed might be in any way good are rejected.
It's funny how so many of the people who style themselves as "objective" and "ideology-free" all fall into the same ideological traps, straw-manning their opposition and believing what is most convenient for their own in-group.
How can anyone claim with a straight face that America is a nation were inter-racial violence is understood in terms of its historical roots too much, and go on to state that the idea that "greed is good" is demonized?
He's not talking about "America", he's talking about "social psychology", or to be more precise, the predominant academic culture in that field.
Who did?
[Edit: irrelevant argument removed]
What bothers me is that the pendulum will return to the old notion of self-esteem as a doggie biscuit for obeying one's masters. I'm sure the 1 percenters will like that.
I didn't like the focus on conservative / liberal ideology, I think both of those are the same kinds of mixed category that self-esteem wound up being. It surprises me that the author didn't see that connection, though I should probably cut him some slack as it was written a whole year ago.
Its subject argues that promoting self-esteem leads to narcissism, and therefore is undesirable, while never fully grasping the obvious: that narcissism, despite appearances, is an artifact of low self-esteem.
In the end, the number of people who are truly inflated (which is the correct term I believe) are so few that this is an argument about over-eating discussed during a famine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Baumeister
and perhaps do a find for "Baumeister" on this page
The social damage done by that dogma is likely severe.
The better approach is a scientific one. Measure. Question. Be sure that your beliefs are based on evidence, not theory.
Data is indeed the answer. Please, for the love of god, measure, question and quantify. But when it comes to social studies real data is very difficult to come by. Self reporting is the antithesis of empiricism. Baumeister does good work, given the field that he works in, and his ideas are powerful and useful. But at the end of the day, it's just a matter of social fashion. People prefer his ideas, or other ideas, or whatever suits them at the time. Anyone can come up with an experiment that shows that one psychological disposition is superior to another, or that kids should be taught this over that. These things change with the times. By comparison, F will always equal ma. There's no way to argue with real science. Everything else, is open to debate.
Not entirely. The article talks about this. The theory was that low self-esteem led to violence. The facts are that self-reports of high self-esteem are correlated with increased violence.
You might disregard the "self report" aspect of the studies. But the main conclusion is that the original theory is wrong.
For Branden, the violent people Baumeister wrote about might have appeared confident, but underneath all that bluster they actually had low self-esteem.“One does not need to be a trained psychologist to know that some people with low self-esteem strive to compensate for their deficit by boasting, arrogance, and conceited behavior,” he wrote.
It's all a game of he said/she said. The bottom line is that the human mind is opaque. There's nothing easier than theorizing about something that can't be measured, or even directly observed.
If people have unmeasurable low self-esteem, than the original theory is unfalsifiable, which means it's outside of the realm of science.
Or, we can talk about reality. We can treat people like black boxes, and correlate their claims with their actions. This is called "psychology".
The human mind is nowhere near opaque.
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/
With some work, a computer can determine the video a person is watching in an MRI. It's not perfect, but it's amazingly close.
Saying "the human mind is opaque" is wishful thinking. It's magical thinking that somehow people (and thought) is different from everything else in the world.
It's not. We're meat puppets.
The original theory is that bullying is a way for someone with low self-esteem to make themselves feel superior. By the definition of the theory, a bully so motivated not to see themselves as having low self-esteem that they will resort to violence. Someone who will resort to violence to avoid acknowledging something, is unlikely to self-report accurately on that same topic.
Self-report is therefore clearly an invalid measure by which to test this theory.
When I read words like 'hollow self esteem' I feel like I am reading a poem, not scientific data. Hollow self esteem means 'self esteem that lacks social validation', but when we define self esteem clearly in terms of social validation with relations that show the distribution of 'when the social validation occurs in terms of time' and 'how much social validation is given' versus 'how much social manipulative ability is granted' then people in society start to become definable and moveable like machines. What is the point of existing as a human being when life can be plotted?
If I define my self esteem through a single data point in my past, can you really compare that to someone who defines their self esteem by each day as it unfolds? Can you really measure self esteem when everyone's self esteem is dependent on comparisons of self analysis versus social analysis?
Culture defines culture. Social groups define social groups dynamically as the group is processing and composing information. Data is almost the same as theory when it comes to psychology. I personally find it all ridiculous and believe that people need to have balance between the methods of science and understanding and seeking their own personal truths. People have the potential to be more than what language and mathematics can convey, but this makes many people uncomfortable, because it's not definable. What isn't definable always seems to get filtered through a lens of religious, dogmatic belief in the scientific community. If it can't be measured, it doesn't exist. But it does exist. The problem is that scientific, mathematical language does not measure the effect of itself.
You hold science as a constant and shape the world around that lens. What happens when science starts to take itself apart, when it starts to redefine itself, analyze itself, study itself?
Keep down-voting me if you like. All I really know is that I have more questions than I have answers, and I don't think that is a bad thing.
What happens when you do that? Well, for me what happens is the realization of the value of being pragmatic. Truth is, like Descartes said, we can't really know anything but our own existence, and depending on your definition of existence, even that can be questioned. But what is the value in that? Now when I know I know nothing, is it a good basis to live my life upon?
My answer to that is no, it's not a good basis to stand on. Instead I choose to approach it pragmatically, or as an engineer if you prefer, "I accept my perception of reality* as real" and "a useful fact is information that can somehow be used to predict the future"
But then, I tend to like answers more than questions, I guess it comes included with my engineering degree.
* Not meaning that everything I perceive in a given moment has to be real, rather that my understanding of the world is my best guess of how things are.
Also, I didn't down-vote you. And I agree that not having answers is not a bad thing--what is bad, though, is making up an answer instead of just accepting the lack of knowledge, or insisting that current lack of knowledge means permanent lack of knowledge.
> insisting that current lack of knowledge means permanent lack of knowledge.
The alternative to that is that there is a limit to knowledge, that it is possible for all things to be known. And even if humanity does hit that point, I think at that point, it becomes a choice to choose whether to believe all things are known, or to believe that some things are not yet known.
Also, belief is not a choice, by definition. Belief comes from being convinced. You cannot choose to be convinced, either you are or you are not, change only comes due to new information or new ideas, but never due to a deliberate decision to be convinced of something else. You can decide to pretend a different belief, but you cannot decide your actual belief.
It's just the opposite of the confidence in always yielding a conclusion. When I work with science, I ere on the side of hesitance, and I always believe that hesitence will be there.
I think some of my beliefs about believing are stronger than my actual beliefs. This conversation has become too overgeneralized to say anything useful aside from the ways the mind simplifies, reduces, and applies pattern derived from observation.
I don't understand the strong reaction in 'knowing'. I always feel like I have to know everything all at once, in order to truly suggest that I know anything, and since I can not know everything, I only have a very vague guess of knowing some things, which are continually subject to the same analytic deconstruction and reconstruction. Ideas are broken down and rebuilt over and over and not a single one of them is a complete picture. That's what I observe in my mind and in dialogue outside of my mind. I don't have to believe anything about it because it's a direct observation. It just comes down to how angry, 'strong', assertive, or authoritative people sound, and I find that ridiculous. It's like being human is a stupid joke.
Well, if you haven't thought about something, you presumably don't believe it? (Not to be confused with believing the negation, which you presumably also wouldn't believe in that case.)
> This conversation has become too overgeneralized to say anything useful aside from the ways the mind simplifies, reduces, and applies pattern derived from observation.
Well, feel free to be more specific?
> I don't understand the strong reaction in 'knowing'. I always feel like I have to know everything all at once, in order to truly suggest that I know anything, and since I can not know everything, I only have a very vague guess of knowing some things, which are continually subject to the same analytic deconstruction and reconstruction.
I think I would agree. That's why I consider the question of knowledge (in the sense of being ultimately sure about the truth of something) ultimately uninteresting. What actually matters is what you believe (that is, what you act on) because you cannot avoid interacting with the world, and you will do so based on you beliefs, whether they reflect ultimate truth or not.
> Ideas are broken down and rebuilt over and over and not a single one of them is a complete picture. That's what I observe in my mind and in dialogue outside of my mind. I don't have to believe anything about it because it's a direct observation.
Well, I think that that's questionable. On the one hand, semantically, considering something you observed directly to be true still is a belief, even if a well-founded one. One can believe things by blind faith or due to direct observation, or for many other reasons, some good, some bad. On the other hand, I would be cautious with the term "direct observation": There is a ton of indirection between your brain thinking a thought and the "reality" outside the brain causing the thought, and conceptually there isn't really all that much difference between observing another brain by means of that brain causing the body it's in to create sound waves, causing your eardrum to vibrate, causing nerve signals in your brain, and the same with an MRI machine observing the same brain and feeding its images through your eyes into your brain, both are ultimately pretty indirect, even if one of the scenarios uses only natural machinery to achieve the result, so artificial machinery is not necessarily any worse at producing a reliable perception of the world than natural bodies, and you have to believe quite a few things in both cases, be it about larynxes, air, sound waves, and ears, or about MRI machines, light, and retinas.
> It just comes down to how angry, 'strong', assertive, or authoritative people sound, and I find that ridiculous.
I am not quite sure what you are trying to say with that, but I guess that science is the best way we know that avoids just that as far as possible by making it as easy as possible for anyone to reproduce an observation (at least that's the ideal ...).
> It's like being human is a stupid joke.
Well, from some perspective, maybe? I guess the solution is to adopt a different perspective? Like: Well, yes, ultimate knowledge seems to be unattainable--but why does that matter? It's a philosophical curiosity, interesting to think about, but ultimately it doesn't prevent you from improving your model of the world and interacting with the world. Your model predicts that the chair you sit on will hold you up, and it does, you don't get hurt and can sit comfortably--does it matter whether the existence of the chair is some ultimate truth or maybe "just" an illusion?