Is High Self-Esteem Beneficial?

Orth. & Robins (2022) published “Is High Self-Esteem Beneficial? Revisiting a classic question” American Psychologist, 77(1), 5-17. Here’s the abstract:

Debates about the benefits of self-esteem have persisted for decades, both in the scientific literature and in the popular press. Although many researchers and lay people have argued that high self-esteem helps individuals adapt to and succeed in a variety of life domains, there is widespread skepticism about this claim. The present article takes a new look at the voluminous body of research (including several meta-analyses) examining the consequences of self-esteem for several important life domains, and that these benefits hold across age, gender, and race/ethnicity, and controlling for prior levels of predicted outcomes and potential third variable confounds. The meta-analytic estimates of self-esteem effects (which average .10 across domains) are comparable in size to estimates of other hypothesized causal factors such as self-efficacy, positive emotionality, attachment security, and growth mindset, and larger than some generally accepted pharmaceutical interventions. Discussion focuses on several issues that are critical for evaluation the findings, including the strength of evidence for making causal inferences, the magnitude of the effects, the importance of distinguishing between self-esteem and narcissism, and the generalizability of the results. In summary, the present findings support theoretical conceptions of self-esteem as an adaptive trait that has widespread influences on healthy adjustment and adaptation, and suggest that interventions aimed at boosting self-esteem might, if properly designed and implemented, benefit individuals and society as a whole.

Orth & Robins document positive relationships between self-esteem and social relationships, school, work, mental health, physical health, and relationships between low self-esteem and antisocial behavior. 

There are two responses to Orth and Robins and a response by them to both. The first comment “Feeling Good Without Doing Good: Comment on Orth and Robins” is by Kroeger, Baumeister, & Vohs. In 2003, Baumeister et al. had published data and an argument against self-esteem. Orth and Robins indicate that their data are improvements on those used in 2003 because they are longitudinal, utilize newer meta-analyses, and far larger data samples, often with adequate controls. Kroeger et al. note that their 2003 research concludes that “high self-esteem has two empirically supported benefits, namely initiative (e.g., resisting influence, speaking up, following one’s own ideas) and good feelings (e.g., happiness, coping)” (p. 18). They add that “High self-esteem is measured as a willingness the self favorably” and urge caution because it may simply reflect a positivity bias (p. 18).

The second comment is “How to Raise Children’s Self-esteem: Comment on Orth and Robins” by Eddie Brummelman focuses on specific strategies, noting, for example, that parental overvaluation predicts narcissism, not self-esteem. The Brummelman & Sedikides (2020) tripartite model “holds that the development of self-esteem without narcissism can be cultivated through realistic feedback (rather than inflated praise), a focus on self-improvement (rather than on outperforming others), and unconditional regard (rather than regard that is conditional on achievement)” (p. 21). 

In their response, Orth and Robins note that they “found that high self-esteem predicts future reports of relationship quality, while controlling for prior reports of relationship quality. This finding cannot simply reflect the tendency for high self-esteem individuals to view their relationships in an overly positive light because this tendency would also influence their earlier reports of relationship quality, which are being statistically removed from their future reports of relationship quality” (p. 24).

The full text of the article is worth reading, as are the three comments. The Brummelman and Sedikides model may be helpful to practitioners making specific recommendations about ways to improve low self-esteem.