Adequate self-esteem is the correspondence of one’s own opinion about oneself, a realistic assessment of one’s capabilities and skills in the context of the requirements of the situation, the real picture of what is happening and the expectations of other people. Two variants of distortion occur: when a person thinks that he can easily cope with plans and the result does not correspond, and when he predicts failure, although he can easily do what is necessary. The level of self-evaluation and its adequacy is revealed by the feasibility of plans, as one of the main criteria.
Adequate self-esteem of a person is not only a set of internal beliefs, but has confirmation from specialists in the chosen field. Those. a person can form any image of himself and evaluate himself in accordance with internal processes, childhood attitudes, if this coincides with the opinion of the majority of authorities in the situation, then self-esteem can be considered adequate.
Self-esteem and level of personality aspirations
American psychologist W. James developed a special formula for self-esteem: Self-esteem = Success / Level of aspirations
Where the level of aspiration is the level to which an individual strives in various spheres of life (status, career, well-being). The level of aspiration serves as an ideal goal for one's future actions.
Success is the achievement of specific results when performing certain actions that reflect the level of aspiration.
The formula shows that self-esteem can be increased either by reducing the level of aspirations or by increasing the effectiveness of one’s actions.
Personal self-esteem can be overestimated, adequate, or underestimated. Strong deviations from adequate self-esteem cause a person to experience internal conflicts and psychological discomfort. Often the person himself does not understand the true causes of all these phenomena and begins to look for reasons outside himself.
Obviously inflated self-esteem of an individual is marked by a superiority complex - “I am the most correct”, as well as by a complex of two-year-old children - “I am the best.” A person with high self-esteem idealizes himself, exaggerates his abilities and capabilities, as well as his importance to the people around him. Such a person ignores failures to maintain psychological comfort, maintaining his usual high self-esteem.
An individual with inflated self-esteem presents weaknesses as strengths, passing off ordinary aggressiveness and stubbornness as determination and will. Often such a person turns into an unattainable person for other individuals, becoming mentally deaf and losing feedback from others. He never listens to other people's opinions. Such a person attributes failure to external factors, other people’s machinations, circumstances, intrigues, but not to his own mistakes. Critical assessment of oneself by other individuals is unacceptable for him and he treats such people with obvious distrust, attributing all this to envy and nit-picking.
A person with high self-esteem sets inflated and impossible goals for himself; has a level of aspirations that exceeds its real capabilities. Such a person is characterized by such traits as conceit, arrogance, striving for superiority, aggressiveness, rudeness, quarrelsomeness, and rigidity. He behaves emphatically independently and this is perceived by others as disdain and arrogance.
An individual with high self-esteem is subject to persecution by hysterical and neurotic manifestations; he believes that he deserves more, but he is unlucky. He is often predictable and stable in his behavior, has a characteristic appearance: high head position, straight posture, long and direct gaze, commanding notes in his voice.
Obviously low self-esteem of the individual manifests itself in an anxious, stuck type of character accentuation. As a rule, such a person is not self-confident, indecisive, shy, overly cautious and, like no one else, more urgently needs the approval and support of others.
An individual with low self-esteem is easily susceptible to the influence of other individuals and thoughtlessly follows their lead. Often, suffering from an inferiority complex, he tries to self-realize, to assert himself at any cost, which leads such a person to be unscrupulous in the means when achieving goals. Such a person is feverishly trying to make up for lost time and prove to himself and everyone his importance and that he is personally worth something. His goals set for himself are lower than he can achieve. A person with low self-esteem often gets lost in his troubles and failures, while inflating their role in life. Such a person is too demanding of others and of himself, overly self-critical, withdrawn, envious, suspicious, vindictive, and cruel. Often such a person becomes a bore, annoying others with little things, and also causing conflicts, both at work and in the family. The appearance is characterized by a retracted head, an indecisive gait, and averting the eyes to the side when speaking.
The adequacy of a person’s self-esteem is established by the relationship between two opposing mental processes: cognitive and protective. The cognitive mental process promotes adequacy, and the protective process acts in the direction of the opposite reality.
The defensive process is explained by the fact that every person has a sense of self-preservation, which acts in situations of self-esteem to self-justify personal behavior, as well as self-defense of internal personal psychological comfort. This process also occurs when a person is left alone with himself, since it is difficult for a person to recognize the chaos within himself.
What to pay attention to when analyzing
Praise and criticism of yourself Please note whether you praise or criticize yourself more. You should definitely praise yourself, even for minor achievements. Childhood: were your parents happy or unhappy with you? Our mothers and fathers can, without malicious intent, create insecurity in us with their criticism. In any case, we need to analyze our childhood and start working on our self-esteem on our own. What qualities in other people attract you? An example should always be taken from the best. If you find it difficult to understand yourself, pay attention to how confident people behave. Communicate with successful and confident people, learn everything you need to gain confidence. What is your reaction to insults and insults? A self-confident person will not pay attention to insults and comments addressed to him. At most he will respond with the same coin. On the contrary, even a harmless remark can unsettle a woman with low self-esteem. How does the process of falling asleep occur? If you fall asleep without problems and nothing bothers you, then everything is clear - everything is fine with self-esteem. But if you can’t fall asleep for a long time and are engaged in introspection, then your self-confidence is clearly weak. Don't compare yourself to other people. And if you compare, then you need to be equal to the best. Take care of yourself. A new hairstyle, a stylish wardrobe and a toned body will increase your confidence in your attractiveness. And this is already half the success.
Create uniqueness. Be unique. No need to copy anyone, create your own unique world. Radiate positivity. Filter criticism. Don't take other people's opinions to heart. Often they just want to hurt and offend us. Always remain confident. Hang out with nice people. Surround yourself with positive people who give you good vibes
We humans are herd creatures and communication is very important to us. Be positive and you will attract good people. Practice psychotechnics (self-hypnosis, meditation)
It is no longer news that all life is built by the power of our thoughts. Work on your inner self. Let joy and confidence always reign inside, then your life will go as you wish. Be sure to love and appreciate yourself. And then life will give you gifts in return, and the most worthy men and good friends will be next to you.
Self-esteem of a young mother
What qualities does a person have that lead to success in society?
If a child cheats, what should parents do?
What can you recommend?
Of course, knowing your strengths and weaknesses is important for any person, and especially for a businessman. In addition, this knowledge must be built into a chain of behavioral algorithms that are automatically reproduced under stressful conditions.
Let me explain with an example. You are the head of a department and you are planning important negotiations. But communication is not your strong point. If you have inadequate self-esteem, you will take over the negotiation process and, most likely, it will be unsuccessful.
With adequate self-assessment, the following actions are possible:
1. Knowing your character traits in advance, you took care of the presence in the company of a sufficient number of qualified managers capable of solving these problems.
2. You have worked on yourself and are ready to calmly and confidently apply your new skills and knowledge in the current situation. Working on yourself means: admitting that you have a problem, identifying its cause on your own or with the help of a specialist, determining how to eliminate it and trying these methods in a safe, non-stressful environment, correcting it, feeling its effectiveness and adopting it.
Is it possible to form adequate self-esteem? Yes, but for this you need correct feedback - from colleagues, bosses, in the family. That is, if you are a bad negotiator and don’t understand this yourself, someone should tell you this, and you should respect and accept this assessment. But if you feel that you are often mistaken in assessing your strengths (no matter in which direction), then it is better to seek help from a specialist.
List of second order factors
| Designations | Name | First-order factors included in the formed factor |
| QI | Extroversion – introversion | A+, F+, H+, Q24 (E+) |
| QII | Anxiety - adjustment | C-, H-, L+, O+, Q3-, Q4+ |
| QIII | Cortertia – panthemia (“aliveness of the cerebral cortex”) Realism – sensitivity | A-, I-, M-, (E+, L+) |
| QIV | Independence - submission | E+, L+, M-, Q,+, Q2+, H+ |
| QV | Composure - naturalness | N+, (A+, M-, O-) |
| QVI | Subjectivism - realism | I+, M+, L- |
| QVII | Intelligence level | B+ |
| QVIII | High "superego" - low "superego" | C+, Q3+, G+ |
The content characteristics of second-order factors require analysis of first-order factors. The level of factors determines the place assigned to the factor in the structural-hierarchical model of personality. Finding second-order factors is possible by factorizing correlations between first-order factors. This process can theoretically be repeated until one or more unrelated factors remain.
Attitudes towards multi-level personality models are quite contradictory. Thus, J. Guilford had a negative attitude towards higher-order factors, since the reliability of correlations between primary factors largely depends on the experimental conditions, the characteristics of the groups being studied, cultural traditions and other side effects.
G. Eysenck, on the contrary, considers primary factors to be unreliable, since their content strongly depends on the specifics of information collection, the tests used and the methods of factor analysis.
Cattell's position can be seen as a compromise. He insists on the usefulness of multilevel models of personality, especially in solving practical applied problems. In these cases, the values of higher order factors must be specified by indicating the primary factors from which they are formed. For example, introversion will have a qualitatively different meaning depending on which of the first-order factors is more pronounced. A person whose factor A is more pronounced than factor H or F will be characterized as more reserved, timid in social contacts, shy in unfamiliar groups of people, but sociable in direct interpersonal contacts. Therefore, if we do not want to lose the predictive power of tests, we should use factors of different levels.
The identified secondary factors “extraversion - introversion” and “anxiety” have already appeared as primary factors in objective tests; they play an important role in Eysenck’s system. And if among the primary factors that have too specific content, those are found that have no correspondence in the factors identified from the Q-data, then with the help of second-order factors one can get closer to more fundamental factors. Based on the Cattell system, the main lines indicating the origin of the factors are determined:
a) constitutional factors (according to Eysenck and Cattell, they most often serve as characteristics of temperament in all its dynamic manifestations);
b) factors determined by the environment;
c) structural factors (the set of factors considered by Guilford, Eysenck and Cattell), according to the degree of their generalization, constitute a hierarchical organization of personality.
Cattell, thanks to statistical processing of second-order factors, also obtained third-order factors. However, to date, there are only two studies of third-order factors and nine factors have been obtained, eight of which correspond exactly to the second-order factors shown in Table 1. 2. The ninth factor is identified, but not interpreted. Therefore, we do not consider third-order factors.
Below are the substantive characteristics, compiled by R. Cattell, of the main second-order factors.
How self-esteem affects us
What is self-esteem? This is a person’s opinion about himself, an assessment of his own qualities (advantages, skills), a certain degree of self-respect and self-acceptance, a sense of personal worth and competence (or, conversely, a feeling of worthlessness and ineptitude).
There are low, high and adequate self-esteem. And whatever it is, it is a fairly stable mental formation that does not change as easily as one might sometimes like.
American philosopher and psychologist William James, one of the founders of pragmatism, came up with the following formula:
Self-esteem = success ÷ level of aspirations.
The latter refers to the degree of difficulty of the tasks that a person considers acceptable to set for himself. The more complex the tasks, the higher the level of aspiration. Accordingly, in order to strengthen and grow self-esteem, it is necessary that all these tasks and aspirations be accompanied by success, i.e. what was planned was carried out, what was planned was implemented, the processes launched brought results.
And here we come to, perhaps, the most important quality of self-esteem - its adequacy. If a person evaluates his abilities unrealistically (overestimated or underestimated), then it will be difficult for him to correctly correlate his strengths with various tasks and environmental requirements
Accordingly, it will be difficult for him to achieve success, since in the end he will understand that he was solving trivial problems and his winnings are insignificant, or, conversely, that he will put a lot at stake, but the dividends received will not recoup the costs.
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Thus, inadequate self-esteem can lead to unrealistic (high or low) aspirations, which means choosing goals that are too difficult or easy. In any case, this leads to the emergence of a stressful situation (i.e. the situation itself may not contain anything objectively threatening, but its subjective experience will be associated with feelings of anxiety, lack of confidence in one’s abilities, a panicked mood and, as a result, uncriticism in assessing what has been achieved, errors in forecasts, etc.).
It is clear that no matter how you feel about yourself, a sudden change in the situation (stress) causes a natural mobilization of forces
But there is an important difference
A person with adequate self-esteem knows the limits of his abilities, strengths and weaknesses. And therefore, he competently directs and distributes forces - he does not set himself impossible tasks, rejoices at feasible (!) success, and does not hesitate to ask for help.
If self-esteem is inadequate, then the complexity of the situation increases significantly. The mobilization of internal forces occurs, but they are assessed incorrectly, and the result is not at all what the person expected.
For example, if you learned from childhood that strong people solve problems exclusively on their own, and only weak people need help, then in some new, completely unexpected case for you, you will habitually demand from yourself an immediate and successful solution to the problem. You will increase the amount of your excitement, use proven remedies, but this will not lead to a solution to the problem. More precisely, on the contrary, the problem will worsen, as the level of anxiety will increase, and it will become even more difficult to soberly assess the situation.
About the same thing will happen if you learned from childhood: I am a weak person and I can’t cope with almost anything without outside help. Anxiety and excitement will also increase, and this will also not give the desired result - due to the fact that the energy will not be directed to a direct solution to the situation, but will be scattered on the search for support.
The importance of self-esteem in a person's life
Self-esteem determines the level of success in all areas. Every decision or action depends on the size of your ego. If it is underestimated, a person is afraid to try something new. It's hard to unlock potential.
A person suffering from narcissism is willing to take on a difficult task. He firmly believes that he will accomplish it. If the “narcissist” fails to complete a task, he blames his colleagues/grading level/unfair conditions.
Are you ready to stop thinking about your problem and finally move on to real actions that will help you get rid of your problems once and for all? Then perhaps you will be interested in this article .
Features of self-esteem affect the following areas of your life:
- relationship with a guy or girl;
- achievements at work;
- financial sector;
- sexual contact;
- relationships with relatives, colleagues, friends.
Others treat you the same way you treat yourself. If, in your opinion, a man married you out of pity, over time he will be visited by the same thoughts. Girls with high egos think they did a favor by getting married. The guy will either succumb to this mood, becoming henpecked, or break off the relationship.
The ability to position yourself is the secret to success at work. But don't overdo it. Inflated self-esteem will alienate colleagues.
People with an adequate assessment of their own body do not have problems in their intimate life. They are relaxed, not focused on themselves, but feel their partner.
Individual characteristics of people with high self-esteem
If self-esteem is high, a person constantly tries to stand out, he is somewhat arrogant, always speaks out on any occasion, even if he is not competent in the matter, puts himself above others and tries to command.
Distinctive features of such people:
· They put their own “I” first and attach great importance to their person.
· They react inadequately to comments from outsiders; they will not like opinions that differ from their own.
· They are authoritarian and look down on others.
· They do not accept outside help, rejecting it even if they need it.
· In their opinion, they have no weaknesses, they see their negative qualities in a positive light, and try to pass them off as advantages.
· Self-centered, proud, thinking only about themselves, forgetting about others.
· They exhibit mannerisms in their behavior and act deliberately in many cases.
Sometimes you can hear that high self-esteem is better than low self-esteem. This statement does not always correctly characterize the situation; communicating and existing next to a person who has too high self-esteem is not always pleasant and comfortable.
Low self-esteem
Low self-esteem is more common than high self-esteem. In this case, the person is constantly in an anxious state and experiences lack of confidence in himself and his abilities. Such people can be shy, suspicious and very self-critical. They set themselves low, uncomplicated and easily achievable goals, although they could achieve more; they are ready to admit their mistakes and criticize themselves for them, but cannot praise themselves for their achievements.
Article on the topic
Take it higher! How to increase self-esteem
What to pay attention to
Psychologist, psychiatrist Evgenia Streletskaya about healthy self-esteem and self-love:
1. Self-esteem is not only what we think about ourselves, but also our attitude towards ourselves, i.e. the emotions we feel towards ourselves. If you feel hatred, shame, disgust, or guilt towards yourself, you have low self-esteem.
2. Our self-esteem critically depends on how our loved ones treat us. If you are subjected to domestic violence, then you will a priori have low self-esteem. There can only be one way out: change the environment to a favorable one. The rest won't help.
3. There are 2 types of low self-esteem - namely self-hatred with specific precise negative beliefs (among which stands out the case with history, when, for example, someone called names, and the habit of scolding oneself + laziness) and the lack of positive ideas about oneself.
4. It includes several sectors. For convenience, you can highlight beauty (appearance), intelligence, achievements, character, highlights.
5. How is self-esteem formed? At the ages of 3 to 6 years, especially parents should give us a lot of real, reflective of our true self, positive assessments, which are at this evolutionary stage of the formation of the psyche an expression of genuine interest on the part of the parents.
