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Have you ever wondered what someone means when they refer to ‘healthy self-esteem?’ Does that mean that someone is fearless or confident? To begin our discussion on self-esteem, we must first agree on a definition.

At this point, let’s agree that self-esteem is ‘the way in which a person judges their own value.’ What that means, basically, is that if a person judges himself to be without value, he has poor self-esteem. On the other hand, if he feels he’s very valuable, he exhibits good, or healthy, self-esteem.

With that definition in mind, let’s continue our discussion by looking at the way in which self-esteem influences our lives. An interesting shift in this area has occurred in the past few years among those who study the effects of self-esteem. For the past twenty five years, many in psychology and education have believed that a child’s level of self-esteem strongly predicts his future success.

Starting in the 1980s in California, anti-drug programs, programs to reduce teen pregnancy and high school dropout rates, and an abundance of classroom curricula have been based on the notion that children with good self-image are less likely to give in to peer pressure.

The proponents of the self-esteem movement believe children’s self-esteem is most influenced by negative early childhood experiences such as abuse. Many states followed suit and made huge investments in bolstering the self-esteem of school children through education programs, so that they would become responsible adults.

But two surprising notions have come to light: recent research seems to indicate that healthy self-esteem is not a reliable indicator of success in life, in fact, the reverse appears to be true.

In fact, a large study by Brown University which was published in 2003 suggests that self-esteem follows success. What they found was that a marked increase in self-esteem occurred consistently when their subjects were able to accomplish their goals.

The second surprise, from that study, and others since, is that the most important factor in self-esteem seems to be the set of social values in which the person believes. To untangle that statement, let’s define social values as the agreed-upon valuable concepts in a society.

Said another way, one’s social values, or what one’s society determines to be valuable, create the basis for whether or not they feel that they, themselves, have an internal sense of value. For instance, if the society in which one lives places a high value on knowledge, and they have the capability to study and learn easily, then self-esteem increases as ‘measure-up’ to that social value.

So now, we’ve arrived back to our original question: what exactly, then, is self-esteem? Based on what we’ve discussed, our definition can now be: the value a person places on themselves in the context of their larger society and its values. It remains to be seen how that new definition will change the way healthy self-esteem is encouraged in children.

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