Self-Esteem’s Benefits  

This month we take a look at the benefits of self-esteem.  The biggest positive association with self-esteem is that people with high levels of self-esteem tend to be happier and less depressed.  Like many situations though, it is not clear which causes the other.  Does high self-esteem cause people to feel better, or do people who feel better tend to have higher self-esteem?  It is an interesting question.

High self-esteem also makes people more persistent.  Those who feel good about themselves are more likely to stay committed to a task and follow through. 

There are a few areas where self-esteem seems to have a weak positive effect.  It is weakly related to performance both academically and at work.  There also may be some relationship between high self-esteem and popularity and even relationships in general, though the research on those areas is pretty tentative.  Interestingly, those are often the areas where we assume self-esteem makes the biggest difference. 

I believe the bottom line is that higher levels of self-esteem just feel better.  That is a good thing, but there is a dark side to self-esteem as well.  It is important to be cautious about making the development of self-esteem too important.  We will start to get into that next month. 

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