How Roy Baumeister challenged the idea of self-esteem (2014)

https://medium.com/matter-archive/the-man-who-destroyed-americas-ego-94d214257b5

by evilsimon • 11 years ago

141 82 11 years ago

meesterdude2• 11 years ago

I skimmed the first quarter of it and read through the rest; a decent read that touches on a lot of good points.

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?

maaaats• 11 years ago

a decent read that touches on a lot of good points.

Too bad the title is really off-putting. Sounds like any clickbait website, not a good journalistic piece.

meesterdude2• 11 years ago

thats why i skimmed the first quarter of it :)

erikb4• 11 years ago

The idea that men are on the top and the bottom and women somewhere in the middle is something I also experienced when learning about China. There are so many men who are completely unable to find a decent job and nor any wife at all, and on the other end of the spectrum men so rich that one of them has more money/power than a small country. The point that women completely ignore the men on the bottom and fight each other about the men on the top, who in turn have so much choice and so little punishment for bad behaviour that they don't regard women as breathing human beings, seems to add up to a picture that looks quite realistic.

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?

Tycho• 11 years ago

I've never seen those two ideas combined before: the skewness of the male population towards failure, and the resulting misogyny of the "spoilt for choice" men at the other end of the distribution. Very interesting.

saraid2165• 11 years ago

Notably, the men at the bottom are considered failures for failing to acquire a wife. That's also one of those things that feminism takes issue with. Poor males are not saints; they just aren't in a position to actually change the overall status quo.

If wife acquisition stopped being an indicator of success in China, you'd have a lot fewer men being considered at the bottom.

rlthomas2• 11 years ago

The root of this is that having a daughter was less culturally valued, people chose sex-selective abortions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-selective_abortion#China), which led to a skewed gender ratio for the population. Many rural men struggle to find wives because of the shortage. If women/daughters were more valued, there would be more women, and poor men would have an easier time finding a wife. So even though there are more men on the bottom, it was caused by valuing men over women.

adekok4• 11 years ago

The mistake of many modern feminists, he writes, is that they “look only at the top of society..."

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.

leoc• 11 years ago

Susan remembers hearing about a theory that the most successful people in life are those who are still searching for their parents’ unconditional regard.

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.)

geogra4• 11 years ago

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

This is a critique that a lot of feminists make as well. Google the phrase 'white feminism' to see

A_COMPUTER4• 11 years ago

His criticism of feminism is terrible and nothing new at all. I wish he would just shut up and try to draw inferences from his data instead of speculating on a movement he hasn't made any actual attempts to understand. Feminism deserves competent critique from outside its own movement, but it's sure not coming from him. Feminism has more than enough explanation for the expendability of males, he just doesn't know that because he's working from a caricature.

graeme3• 11 years ago

Could you link a feminist discussion of the expendibility of males, skewness of male outcomes, or a critique of Baumeister? I read Baumeister's essay a little while ago, and went looking for critiques. All I found was name calling. I'd like to read an actual response.

(for anyone reading, I'm actually very interested in reading a critique. I'm not just passively calling out the parent post.)

rlthomas2• 11 years ago

I think a large part of the reason that men are more likely to end up "on the bottom" of society is that men have smaller support systems/friend networks than women. Some of the reasons for this are stigma against men expressing vulnerability, stigma against men seeking help, homophobia around close male friendships, gender expectations that women should do more "emotional work" than men, and stereotypes that women are social and men are not. Feminism seeks to dismantle all of the above, so in that sense, it would make it possible for men to have much stronger support networks.

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.

ZenoArrow• 11 years ago

"Additionally, many (most?) feminists believe in "intersectionality", the belief that sexism, racism, classism, ableism, and heterosexism act in intersecting ways"

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.

onnoonno• 11 years ago

Yet it seems to be feminism that clouds the mind by being everything and all at the same time, with about 1000 different subtypes and OF COURSE you are following the right ones.

How about we drop that stupid feminism label and movement and start to actually talk about the issues at hand?

saturnine• 11 years ago

"[T]here are mostly men at the top [and] at the bottom"

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

facepalm2• 11 years ago

Here is a transcript of a speech he gave on the subject of men: http://triggeralert.blogspot.de/2010/10/is-there-anything-go... I think it's well worth a read.

barry-cotter• 11 years ago

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?

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.

vinceguidry• 11 years ago

It was an excellent read, I did not know how huge the self-esteem thing was around the time when I was growing up. Sure explains a lot.

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.

erikb4• 11 years ago

As far as I understood the author he made the same connection as you.

adekok4• 11 years ago

This should be read as a story about belief versus data. Forty years of naked dogma resulted in massive social impact. It took a challenger to go through the data, and show that the ideas weren't true. And from the data, had been known to be not true for decades.

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.

karmacondon2• 11 years ago

Too bad that these things are very difficult, if not impossible, to do in the domain of psychology. How do you measure someone's self confidence? Their degree of narcissism? All you can do is ask them questions, and then argue over which set of questions are more accurate. There is no way to evaluate personality traits other than subjective observation.

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.

adekok4• 11 years ago

Self reporting is the antithesis of empiricism.

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.

drcomputer6• 11 years ago

Measurements that are qualitative are much more tricky to deal with than quantitative measurements.

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.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC4• 11 years ago

You claim that you know that something that can't be measured does exist. If you haven't just made up that claim, that implies that you have somehow detected the existence of that thing. What you might not be aware of is that in the eyes of a scientist that makes you into a "measuring apparatus" for the thing that you claim cannot be measured. In order for a scientist to consider something unmeasurable, it cannot have any influence on the natural world, as that would be a measurable effect. Making you utter or type a claim about the existence of something is an influence on the natural world that can be measured, so if you making that claim is actually causally connected to the thing (as opposed to made up by you), that would make the thing measurable.

drcomputer6• 11 years ago

I don't think you understand that you can't control what information and processes are dynamically influenced and what components are static and unchanging. The methodology of science can be subject to the same level of analytical inspection and rigor that the scientific methodology itself upholds.

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.

gesman• 11 years ago

I love HN comments as a quick way to summarize the essence of good (and often long, full of fluff) read :)

MRSallee3• 11 years ago

I was annoyed this article is so long, but having read it all I can't say there's much fluff in it.

RodericDay• 11 years ago

As a man of science, he insists his views are influenced only by data...
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?

MRSallee3• 11 years ago

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...

Who did?

philwelch• 11 years ago

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.

squozzer• 11 years ago

We can admit that unbridled self-esteem has created too many people whose actions may not jibe with their self-image.

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.

edmccard• 11 years ago

FTA:

"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."

agentutah• 11 years ago

It's frustrating to me that people perpetuate the fallacy that high self-esteem leads to schoolyard bullying. And it's mystifying that some critics of the self-esteem movement (such as the author of this article) are as strident in their criticism as they are.

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.

Joeboy• 11 years ago

I guess it marks me out as an old person that I find Bill Gates to be a hilarious example of a non-bully.

wtbob2• 11 years ago

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).

david9273• 11 years ago

You've been downvoted not because you're wrong but because this is a technical forum. No well-educated psychologist in the world would disagree with you.

rndn• 11 years ago

I'd say either way it's a hasty generalization. I'm very skeptical that there is a high correlation or anti-correlation given how complex people and their social environments can be. In my experience the entire spectrum is covered from "narcissistic prick" to "self-loathing misfit".

iopq2• 11 years ago

I'm sorry, I can't click on titles like this anymore. I just can't do it. Is the article actually good?

MRSallee3• 11 years ago

Yes, it's very good and the title is topically accurate. What's the problem?

iopq2• 11 years ago

The title got changed. It said "How a rebel psychologist..."

beefman• 11 years ago

I think the article is terrible. Just read this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Baumeister

and perhaps do a find for "Baumeister" on this page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-esteem

david9273• 11 years ago

Your instincts are right; it's worth a skip. The article is both poorly written and largely obtuse.

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.

WalterSear• 11 years ago

It argues that attempts to artificially inflate self-esteem result in narcissism.

zem2• 11 years ago

yeah, the article had a lot of interesting information, but presented in a relentlessly axe-grinding style.

UhUhUhUh• 11 years ago

From a novel I read recently: "Bob was American and called himself a former American, although such a thing would never happen. He had the fist-line friendliness typical of this culture, or lack thereof, and the particular and very irritating sense of specialness that had been infused in several generations of American children. You had to be special indeed if you were to play into the American Dream, the very only thing holding this mass of people together. Be somebody rather than do something. Not that this would not be in the back of the head of any parent anywhere else in the world, but anywhere else there was an unconscious sense of healthy resignation. Being was still a tad more important than becoming. Anywhere else, the condensate of thousands of dead generations, the wisdom of finitude had not been washed down to homeopathic levels by the tidal terror and guilt of having left and lost Mother. A borderline Nation, whose sense of abandonment, emptiness and void identity had brought about destruction, oral compensation and the art of fake relationships. But also a knack for pottering stuff."

mcbetz3• 11 years ago

There is obviously still enough ego in America to claim that C. Rogers was the first to argue that men are fundamentally good. Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau formulated that already in the 18th century in his "Second Discours" - Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality)

etqwzutewzu• 11 years ago

Rousseau was not French but Swiss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau

mcbetz3• 11 years ago

Right, my bad. I got taken away by his name, location of death and which country he influenced the most.

zem2• 11 years ago

this is a deeply ironic comment, seeing as how mencius instilled that idea into confucianism back in the 3rd century bc. (rousseau might have introduced the idea to western philosophical thought; i don't know very much about him.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius

mcbetz3• 11 years ago

Thanks for the addition, I have not heard about Mencius before but will certainly check him out. Surely the idea of goodness is older than Rouseau, yet his work is probably the beginning of a new stream in western philosophy.

tjradcliffe• 11 years ago

This is a nice overview of Baumeister's development as a scientist. I've read a couple of his books, and really recommend "Evil": http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Inside-Human-Violence-Cruelty/dp/... It's interesting to learn a bit about where he came from.

[Edit: irrelevant argument removed]

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How Roy Baumeister challenged the idea of self-esteem (2014)

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