Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were two students of the Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. On the morning of April 20, 1999 (Adolf Hitler's 110th birthday), they dressed in black trench coats and murdered twelve students and a teacher before killing themselves. When mental health experts and social commentators opinionated on their behaviour, most of them concluded that they did this because of low self-esteem.
The epidemic of school shootings in America has also been viewed as a consequence of declining self-esteem in children. Also, many popular psychologists have stated that low self-esteem leads to unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, violence, depression, anxiety and alcoholism. Because of this, books about how to increase self-esteem have become very popular. It also has an effect on public policy. For example, in 1986, California funded a project for examining the negative consequences of low self-esteem and to find ways to increase it for 245,000 per year. Many American school teachers also try to increase their students' self-esteem, for example by asking them to generate a list in which they need to state what they are proud of. Some athletic teams also reward trophies to all children, to avoid making losing individual feel bad.
Even though it is believed by many that increasing self-esteem leads to less psychological problems, there is little evidence for this. For example, many studies have shown that low self-esteem is not strongly associated with poor mental health. Self-esteem is also not related to interpersonal success, smoking, alcohol or drug abuse. It has been found that self-esteem is positively associated with high self-esteem. However, it is probably the case that researchers had misinterpreted this correlation for a direct causal effect. Also, self-esteem is associated with depression, but this correlation is moderate and not high. Thus, low self-esteem is not necessary nor sufficient for depression.
However, these findings do not mean that high self-esteem is not beneficial. Having high self-esteem has two benefits. First, self-esteem is associated with greater initiative and persistence (the willingness to attempt tasks and to keep at them when difficulties arise). Second, self-esteem leads to more happiness and emotional resilience. Also, self-esteem is related to a tendency to view oneself more positively than others do. People who have high self-esteem consistently view themselves as smarter, more physically attractive and more likable than other individuals. However, these views are often illusory, because people with high self-esteem do not score higher than other people on objective measures of intelligence, attractiveness and popularity.
There are some studies which show that low self-esteem is associated with a higher risk of physical aggression and delinquency. However, individuals with high self-esteem can also be violent. In contrast, individuals with very high self-esteem are at the highest risk for physical aggression. This is especially true for individuals whose self-esteem is unstable. Often, these individuals tend to be narcissistic and believe that they deserve special privileges, also called "narcissistic entitlements". When they are confronted with a challenge to their self-esteem (also called "a narcissistic injury"), these individuals have the tendency to become violent.
Harris and Klebold were not low in self-esteem. In contrast, they seem to have had a very high self-esteem. Both were fascinated with Nazism and had fantasies about world domination. Also, when looking at Harris' diaries, it was found that he saw himself as morally superior to others and that he felt contempt for all of his peers. Harris and Klebold had been teased and bullied by their peers, which led most commentators to believe that they had low self-esteem. However, this is a case of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" reasoning. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning refers to "it happened after this, therefore it is because of this". However, it is not possible to state that because teasing preceded violence, it also caused the violence. Instead, Harris and Klebold's high self-esteem may have led to that they viewed the teasing as a threat to their self-worth (a narcissistic injury). Therefore, they were motivated to seek revenge.
Brad Bushman and Baumeister conducted experiments to look at how narcissistic individuals react to criticism. They asked participants to write essays, expressing their attitudes towards abortion. Then (randomly), participants got a positive or a negative evaluation on their essay. After this evaluation, the participants got the opportunity to take revenge on the evaluators, by means of exposing them to loud and annoying sounds. It was found that narcissistic individuals responded to negative evaluations by bombarding their opponents with significantly louder noises than other participants. Positive evaluations did not produce such effects.
It can be concluded that bullies and aggressive children have overly positive perceptions of how others see them. In one experiment, aggressive and nonaggressive children were asked to report how popular they were. It was found that aggressive children had the tendency to overestimate their popularity. This was especially true for narcissistic children. Thus, the research described shows that high self-esteem can have negative consequences. This is an important implication, because of the high popularity of self-esteem programs.
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