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Self-Esteem Studies |
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| Posted by: | Scheff, Thomas |
| Title/Position: | Professor Emeritus |
| School/Organization: | UCSB |
| Sent to listserv of: | SPSP |
| Date posted: | May 26th, 2005 |
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Cognition and Emotion? The Dead End in Self-Esteem Research
This article was published in the Journal of the Theory of Social Behavior. 2004. 34: 73-90, but must have been under the radar. The entire text of this paper is available in linked article 27 on my homepage: http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/scheff/
Is it possible to have a friendly discussion of this matter?
Thomas J. Scheff and David S. Fearon, Jr.
Abstract: This article suggests that studies of self-esteem using scales have reached a dead end, and suggest alternative directions. First we show how significance tests have obscured meager results. According to reviews, this huge body of research has yielded no substantial findings. Some sub-fields show consistent, but trivially small, effects; reviews of the entire field show none at all. Most important, the size of effects does not seem to be increasing. Three questions are raised: 1. Are new standards needed to determine when to continue or stop a given line of research? 2. Are new approaches needed alternative to standardized scales and statistical tests? 3. Should future studies of self-esteem emphasize feeling and social components at least as much as cognitive (self-evaluative) components? Studies of self-esteem using interview techniques by George Brown and his colleagues suggest the need to move closer to actual data. An exploratory study that takes this direction a step further is described. We analyze social and cognitive/emotional elements second by second in discourse about topics relevant to self-appraisal and self-feeling. SE seems to have 4 different components: cognitive (self-evaluation), emotional (genuine pride, predispositional and relational of each of the first two. (8,325 words).
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