SELF-ESTEEM & WORTH CONCEPTS

by F Richard Singer III         edition date 11/07/07

website: www.conceptualstudy.org      email: richardsinger3@sbcglobal.net

The Concept of Self-esteem: This present paper gives a paradigm case formulation of a self-esteem concept that is more a way of acting than a kind of belief. Before this occurred to me, it seemed that lack of self-esteem was some vague belief that a person had about being inferior. I could not seem to understand such a belief, and persons plagued by lack of self-esteem could not clarify it for me. It was the attitude concept (as formulated in PNDP) that suggested to me that self-esteem is primarily an attitude that a person P directed towards P rather than any clear beliefs P had about P. Attitudes are types of behavior and patterns of occurrence that are context-specific, in that they are directed towards an object or activity or institution or practice or other more narrowly defined focus of attention.

I will first indicate how to conceptualize self-esteem as an attitude and then discuss how this could relate to beliefs. I will then indicate the general strategy for developing a higher level of self-esteem that occurred because of this conceptual analysis. However while conceptual analysis can suggest paraceptual conjectures it cannot provide evidence for them. I make no paraceptual claims about the utility of this strategy. To determine it utility it must be tested, and results of the testing seem likely to depend on how it is implemented. Moreover this may vary considerably from person to person.

As just indicated, an attitude has an object and is indicated by a pattern of behavior towards that object. The object of P’s attitude of self-esteem is P. The pattern is the way in which P treats P as if P’s wellbeing W is important. P has automatic self-esteem if P normally acts as if W the wellbeing of other were of the same importance. Automatic self-esteem may involve actions in which P intentionally sacrifices P’s interests for the interests of others, especially for ethical reasons, but except in cases involving significant value, automatic self-esteem is incompatible with P sacrificing P’s basic wellbeing. P has low self-esteem if P acts as if P’s own interests do not have the level of priority one would normally expect them to have. Low self-esteem is often linked to a vague belief of being in some sense inferior. I call this belief vague because the concept of inferior being used is often vague Before discussing this I present an account of a fictitious person Lou who developed extremely low self-esteem. I start with some background, I follow this by a paradigm case analysis of this concept. The preceding background is not part of the low self-esteem concept, but is given in order to place Lou’s actions in a broader setting.

Background: Lou is 35 years old. His brother Jim is 2 years older than Lou. Jim made good grades but Lou did not. In general, Lou felt that Jim was able to do everything better than he could. His sister Ann is 4 years younger than Lou Ann was cute, and Lou felt that everybody doted on her. Lou did not feel important to anyone and as a result developed a vague belief that he was unimportant and inferior and even worthless. As Lou grew up he tried to he retreat into his own private world. However this did not seem possible since when he was about thirteen years old he felt that his most private thoughts were apparent to his parents. At age 10 he had been severely punished because he had walked into the bathroom when Ann was taking a bath. Although this was accidental, he felt that he had done something really bad. Furthermore Lou uses pornography to fulfill his sexual fantasies. He knew that this was evil, but he could not resist the temptation. He felt that this proved that he was guilty of looking at his sister, and that he deserved all the pain he was suffering. Because he felt that his parents knew his thoughts he felt that he was being punished.

A Specific Case of Low Self-esteem: The Sunday before Lou’s 35^th birthday, they were at Ann’s house for dinner. Ann congratulated Jim being on promoted to a partner in his law firm. Lou later told his counselor that Ann said this in order to remind everyone that Lou had no professional status. Later Lou said that he walked into the living room Jim was laughing at something his father had said. Lou believed that they were laughing at him. The only evidence Lou could give for this was the vague statement to the effect that they always laugh at him. Lou then told his counselor that he knew that his family would feel obligated to do something for his birthday, and what he wanted was for them to take him to dinner and a movie for his birthday. He wanted to go to the Elm Avenue Steak House and later see a new comedy that had just been released. However instead telling them this, he said nothing until his mother asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday. Lou thought to himself that of course she would not know what he wanted, and while he felt resentment, all he could say was that Dad likes steak so why don’t we go to a steak house. Lou said nothing when the steak house Jim suggested was not the one Lou had in mind. When Ann suggested they see a movie afterwards, Lou was pleased but responded by saying that since Ann liked comedies perhaps we should see the one that had just been released. While this could be interpreted as a polite way of indicating that he cared about her pleasure, it was part of a more general pattern, a pattern of acting as if his own interests are unimportant both to others and to himself. This is because Lou implicitly believes it would be foolish to expect anyone to care about the well being of anyone as unimportant as himself.

Paradigm Case of Low Self-esteem: P: a person with low self-esteem, W: the state of P’s wellbeing, Q: a person whose action may affect P.

(1) P often acts as if W is less important than the wellbeing of others.

(2) Instead of acting to assert P’s own goals and interests P usually defers to those of others

(3) P usually interprets any action taken by any Q that might affect P as not intended to enhance W.

(4) To enhance W in ways that involved support from any Q, P usually acts as if this support will not be freely given, such as acting as if Q must be catered to or fooled.

(5) P usually denies even to P that an action taken by P is intended to serve W.

(6) P often take any remark which is positive about some other person as indirect way of indicating something derogatory about P.

(7) P often assumes that any Q is thinking negative thoughts about P

(8) P often assumes that some unclearly heard remark involves a negative assessment of P.

Allowable Transformations:

Omit any 4 of the last 6 criteria.
Change one or more instances of usually to often.
Change one or more instances of usually to sometimes.
Change one or more instances of often to sometimes.
Change any Q to most Q in P’s family or many or most Q in some group significant to P.
Change any Q to many .
Change any remark to many remarks.

Non-Allowable Transformation :

Omit more than 4 of the criteria
Any change that does not leave at least 2 instances stronger than sometimes

Note: It sometimes said that a person may hide low self-esteem by acting in ways directly opposite (1) and (2). I discuss this at the end of this paper.

General Strategy: I now indicate a general strategy a person P might be able to use in countering low self-esteem. Self-esteem is an attitude which is indicated by a pattern of behavior towards that P takes towards W. Let Z be P’s old way of acting Z. Let A be acting as if W was just as important as the wellbeing of anyone else. P must deliberately and steadily work on replacing Z by A. Furthermore P must do this until A must become an automatic way of acting.

While this strategy is simple state it may be so difficult to implement that its utility for most persons with low self-esteem will be minimal. This strategy involves changing habits that have often been automatic for years. To make A automatic, P needs to deliberately choose A on a multitude of occasions. Since any such choices may raise in P a level of anxiety that P, this may need to be done gradually. The easiest way P can reduce such anxiety is by reverting to Z. P must recognize this, try to avoid self-deception. P must also counter destructive self-criticism for reverting. However while accepting reversions to Z, P should set goals for implementing A on a regular basis in some form or under some conditions where the anxiety can be managed. It might be useful to journal these efforts.

Since deliberately choosing of A will involve anxiety, P will need to learn ways to overcome this anxiety. The most powerful way to overcome anxiety is to take it as a challenge to be dealt with courageously. To do this it is important to bring any feeling of danger into focus. Consider the worst things that are at all likely to happen, and decide if you can tolerate them if they happen. Beyond this, consider the worst thing that could possibly happen and your ability take this risk? The Essence of My Third Collapse of Will gives a detailed analysis of my ways of overcoming anxiety, however not specifically in relation to the anxieties that relate to cultivating greater self-esteem.

Having conceptualized self-esteem as an attitude, I now consider how this attitude could relate to inferiority beliefs. Let B denote the tendency P has to believe that P is inferior or worthless. To the extent that B is prevalent, A will be hard to implement. P needs to be liberated from B. With effort, a possible action can be chosen. This is not the case with most beliefs. One way to challenge B is to choose actions that can result in experience that may make B less plausible. Doing Z will merely reinforce B. To counter B, P must risk doing A. In doing A, P may tend to interpret the result as a failure. This will continue to reinforce B. To avoid this, P must focus on the fact that any such act took courage, and think of even the smallest step in learning to live with more courage as a success.

A second way to challenge a belief is bring it into sharper focus. Being inferior involves some kind of scale and some belief that there is some place one ought to be on that scale. This is somehow associated with a notion of personal worth as an attribute and a belief that different persons differ in their worth. All of this seems both strange and vague to me, probably because I see no way to formulate coherent evaluation concepts for making such judgements. Furthermore I have never known anyone with a belief in personal inferiority whose relevant evaluation concepts did not seem extremely vague. I discuss evaluation concepts in detail in Chapter 3 of A Net for Doing. Here I merely sketch some reasons I find the concept of evaluating a person’s worth both conceptually vague and extremely counterproductive.

Persons are simply where they are, and I find their reasons for being there are far too complex to judge. I act on the conjecture that persons have usually done about as well in shaping their own characteristics as a reasonable judge would expect, assuming that this judge understood all the factors involved. All of us could have done better had we exercised more exceptional powers of will, but then most of the time we do about as well as could be reasonable expected given our state at the time an the situation we were encountering.

The only value judgements that I find applicable to persons are those that relate to specific actions or characteristics. It makes senses for me to say that as a musician I would be worthless or that I am the best mathematics teacher that some of my students have ever encountered. Neither these nor any more comprehensive set of evaluations that I or anyone else could make constitute criteria I would use to judge my worth. Nor would I in any way evaluate the worth of any other person. Persons are the creators of worth and are too important to have their worth evaluated. In assigning worth to persons, I would merely say that each person has infinite personal worth.

Worth Concepts: I next supplement my explanation of why I do not understand the concept of worth being used when a person says that they feel worthless. I develop several types of worth concepts that I do understand. I indicate why they are not applicable to evaluating personal worth, but why they might still relate to belief tendency B. In particular positive feeling in relation to these type of worth can be an asset in countering B. For each of these concepts, the worth of some T is a relation that T bears rather than an attribute of T.

Preferential Worth: Let S be some state in which P can think about choosing between T₁ and T₂.
T₁ has preferential worth over T₂ for P in S to the extent that P would chose T₁ over T₂ while in S.
If this remains the case for various states then T₁ has preferential worth over T₂ for P. T has high preferential worth for P if T has preferential worth over most other things it would be relevant for P to think about choosing instead of T.

Example: Let T₁ be a pound of almonds and T₂ be a five dollar bill. Let S be a state in which P₁ has a pound of almonds to sell and P₂ has a 5 dollars bill. Both of the following could be true, and in fact must be true for an exchange to happen.

(1) T₁ is worth more than T₂ in S for P₂. (2) T₂ is worth more than T₁ in S for P₁.

Suppose the sale takes place and P₃ says that P₁ got a better deal because T₂ is really worth more than T₁. That P₁ got the better deal might be true, if for instance someone else had almonds available at a cheaper price or if P₁ was willing to sell at a cheaper price. However suppose P₂ has a strong desire for almonds and cannot find them at a lower price. It is not clear to me what real worth means, unless P₃ means that in state S most people would value T₂ more than T₁. However (1) is still true and the use of some concept of real worth does not seem useful. I would say instead that T₁ is generally worth more than T₂, meaning that in most states that are likely to occur most people would probably chose T₁ over T₂. If I were to use a concept of ‘really worth more’ I would change this to all possible states and all possible persons. However I fail to see much utility in such a concept.

Preferential Worth of Persons: Now suppose T₁ and T₂ are persons. What is meant by choosing T₁ over T₂? The simplest way to interpret choosing is as choosing to possess. Unless one is thinking in terms of slavery, this is not appropriate for persons. Instead choosing a person relates to some role or purpose. P might choose T₁ over T₂ when choosing a football coach but do just the opposite when choosing a basketball coach.

Consider how to relate this preferential worth concept to the belief tendency B that P has in relation to feeling worthless. Let us separate the feeling in relation to B to what seems like a claim in B, namely the claim C that P is preferentially worthless. For C to be literally true would mean that in any state S each person would choose any other person Q over P regardless of role or purpose. Since the vastness of possible roles alone makes this is seem highly implausible, I doubt this is what anyone could mean by C. If C has cognitive meaning at all, it means something else. Perhaps it means something like in most states that P remembers most persons that P has encountered have chosen some other person over P in many roles P cared about. While this is somewhat vague, suppose we take it as the meaning of C. If so C would be better stated as P currently has little preferential worth. Given C, P has reason to feel discouraged, but it also gives P a place to start challenging B. If P realizes the vagueness C, perhaps P can stop treating C as an absolute and realize C can be modified by taking a multitude of small steps that help P experience some preferential worth. For example, P can cultivate personal characteristics that P values and choose to be around people who value these characteristics. The goal is to learn to think of C as a state rooted in limitations of P’s relational experience, a state that can be changed.

Other Worth Concepts: Feelings about preferential worth are not the only feelings about worth that may be relevant to B. The other two which I now sketch, while often related to preferential worth, can be can be cultivated independently.

Transformational Worth: T has transformational worth in state S for transformation Y to the extent that in S, T is useful for implementing Y. If this remains the case for various states then T has durable transformational worth for Y. T has multifaceted transformational worth T to the extent that T has durable transformational worth a multitude of transformations.

Example: Consider a state in which I want a log with a knot to be split. My friend Steve has a mechanical splitter. If available, both he would have considerable transformational worth. However I and my hand tools have enough transformational worth to do the job.

Cultivating Transformational Worth: To cultivate durable transformational worth P needs to select transformations that P can value. P might choose to transform one of P’s own personal characteristic. If P feels a lack of personal integrity P might work at becoming a person of high integrity. Similar remarks apply to cultivating traits of self discipline or courage. However low self-esteem is often paired with perfectionism, i.e. a feeling only by being exceptional can P’s worth be established. Thus P may set unrealistic goals, judging results in a way that undermines efforts. P may need to focus primarily on one characteristic to transform and also try to cultivate the attitude that it is the effort rather than the results that has transformational worth. Even with persistent quality effort, long established characteristic may take time to change. Furthermore, just feeling some sense of transformational worth is only a start. To develop automatic self-esteem, a person needs to have a sense of multifaceted transformational worth.

Altho transforming ones personal characteristics may be the most powerful way to experience durable transformational worth, this is not the only type of state that can be transformed. I experience transformational worth by something as making a rock path, as editing this paper, as teaching Angela game playing strategies. There are many manifest types of transformations that P can choose to participate in, and for many of these, results come quickly without undue effort. There are also a number of more remote matters that P could chose for transformational efforts. The way I taught mathematics was guided not only by its fairly immediate transformational effect on my students, but also by my desire to be part of a radical transformation in our educational system. While becoming involved in transformation of remote states can enhance P’s sense of transformational worth, there is a danger if P’s self-esteem is low. Remote states are unlikely to be transformed by the efforts of an individual. To experience transformational worth in relation to remote states, P should take great care focus on effort rather than on results. Feeling of failure in regard to the transformation of remote states is likely to produce a sense of futility that will reinforce B.

Functional Worth: This concept uses relates to functional systems, such as the solar system, the engine of a car, the human body, the executive branch of a state government, the European Union, etc. The functional worth of some T a relation between a functional system Y and T. T has functional worth in state S for Y to the extent that T is important for the maintenance Y while in S. If this remains the case for various states then T has functional worth for Y. Another aspect of functional worth relates to the way in which the functional system Y is regarded by P. T has significant functional worth for P to the extent that P has significant functional worth for some Y that is significant to P.

Example: My tail light has no functional worth for my bicycle during daylight hours. It has functional worth at night but not as much as the chain. When my hip prevented walking for exercise, I used my bicycle extensively for this purpose. At that time the chain had more significant functional worth to me than it currently has.

Most of my comments on transformational worth can be modified to fit functional worth. However there is one aspect of functional worth on which I want to focus special attention, namely functional worth thru employment. This is one of the main ways that persons in our society experience significant functional worth and persons employed in low paying jobs may have a tendency to feel that they are worth less than those employed in higher paying jobs. Since P has low self-esteem feelings of low functional worth in connection to employment can be a major barrier to developing greater self-esteem. This is especially the case if P is not employed for pay. One way to counter this is to challenge the primacy of economics in human life. Suppose P thinks that a elementary teacher has at least as much functional worth for our society as a ball player making several million dollars a year. P can probably find a multitude of such relevant examples in relation to other people, and should do so when feeling economically worthless.

The Primacy of Personal Worth: Using transformational or functional worth concepts, P’s characteristics can be evaluated according to various standards, and this can be important to P and may effect P’s self-esteem. However, as with preferential worth, I would not regard this a relevant to P’s worth as a person. A person’s characteristics are merely valuable in relation to whatever purposes are at hand. I recommend cultivating a perspective that regards personal worth as deeper than this. Perhaps the most powerful thing P can do to counter B and is to repeatedly reinforce this way of valuing all persons, thus including P. I repeat the essence of what I said earlier.

Persons are the creators of worth and are too important to have their worth evaluated.
If I was to assign worth to persons,
I would merely say that each person has infinite personal worth.

John Stuart Mill said that if the happiness of all of humanity could be obtained by condemning one person to misery it would ethically wrong to make this decision. While not deduced this way by Mill, this follows from the evaluation principle that assigns infinite worth to each person. Some of our most fundamental traditions suggest this principle: the Declaration Of Independence, the ideal of equality before the law, ideals of universal love. This is also the essence of the most basic form of choosing, namely choosing to save. In the Christian tradition this can be epitomized by the parable of the hundred sheep, one of which had gone astray. From a more humanistic perspective this principle can be typified by so called lifeboat questions. According common human ethics, choosing whose life to save is an ethical dilemma. A possible solutions might involve volunteers or saving children, but it cannot be decided by asking who has more personal worth, and for a carefully designed lifeboat question there may be no ethically valid solution. Various religious perspectives would deal with such a lifeboat question in similar ways,

Compensatory Self-esteem: Suppose P’s behavior fits with several of last 6 criteria of the paradigm case analysis for low self-esteem but seems to be directly opposite of the first 2 criteria. Thus P often acts as if P’s wellbeing is more important than the wellbeing of others and usually acts to implement P’s own goals and interests with little regard to the goals and interests of others. Clearly this attitude is more like low self-esteem than automatic self-esteem, and I could have classified this as another form of low self-esteem.. Instead I conceptualized it separately as compensatory self-esteem. Perhaps compensatory self-esteem and low self-esteem are rooted in the same types underlying feelings, but this is not relevant to this conceptualization. The self-esteem concepts I am using are attitude concepts, with attitudes being conceptualized as a way of acting. Thus whatever the underling reason may be for these ways of acting, what I have called low-self esteem and compensatory self-esteem are different patterns of action. As such, there is good reason that to imagine different ways of dealing with them. In particular a person with low-self may be more likely to want to change than a person with compensatory self-esteem.