I've been thinking about making a series of posts discussing modern dating issues from a social-psychological perspective so here is the first one on self-esteem.

Disclaimer: This is a general discussion based on statsitical means, I don't care that your hyper-specific situation does not apply here. Also, this post is long, but please read if you are interested in this topic. It may not be as interesting as more inflammatory posts but I believe this is an important topic.

Self-esteem is simply put, "How good do you think you are?" There are multiple ways of viewing self-esteem.

Self-esteem can be...

  1. Global vs. Specific: Overall evaluation of the self vs. specific evaluation of one domain (e.g., academic, athletic, physical appearance, etc.)
  2. Trait vs. State: Typical self-esteem vs. momentary self-esteem
  3. Personal vs. Social/Collective: Personal self-esteem vs. evaluation of your group (e.g., race, team, gender, etc)

So what exactly does it mean to have high self-esteem? People with high self-esteem generally have a positive perception of their traits and abilities.

The reverse, of course, is low self-esteem and there are a few things people with low self-esteem have in common.

  1. Confused Self-Concept: They are not sure about who they are. On personality tests, they are more likely to score themselves in the middle of each question.
  2. Mostly Negative Self-Knowledge: What they do know about themselves is often negative (e.g., "I'm ugly," "I suck at basketball," etc).
  3. Do not desire failure; they just expect it: This one is self-explanatory.

Okay, now let's start making the connection to dating and relationships.

My social psychology professor liked to say that it takes self-esteem to have self-esteem. This essentially means high self-esteem begets higher self-esteem. This can be explained through a simple analogy. If you make it to the end of the week and you've paid all the bills you needed to pay, bought groceries, put money into savings, etc and you have $200 left over you are more likely to say yes if a friend asks if you want to get dinner. However, if at the end of the week you have $2 then you are very likely to decline their invitation.

This is the theory of self-esteem enhancement vs. self-esteem protection. If you have high self-esteem then you are more likely to participate in activities that will give you higher self-esteem, the reverse is true if you have low self-esteem. This can be applied to scenarios in dating such as approaching people. People with high self-esteem are more likely to approach people who are they are interested in because they have high self-esteem. They sort of have a "What's the worst thing that could happen?" approach. Because even if they are rejected they know they are still a good and decently attractive person. On the other hand, a person with low self-esteem is not going to approach or initiate contact because they cannot bare the thought of failing. They already think so low of themselves that they cannot handle the idea that they will be forced to think even worse of themselves after the (in their eyes, inivitable) rejection.

Introduce self-handicapping. Self-handicapping is the engagement in behaviors that sabotage one's performance. People with low self-esteem are more likely to engage in self-handicapping as a protective measure. For example, a low self-esteem person on a date will tell a stupid joke so that they can blame the failure of the date on the joke instead of themselves or in a relationship, they will look for small issues to create large arguments so they can blame the end of the relationship on that instead of themseleves. People with low self-esteem do not want to hate themselves so they will find excuses to justify poor outcomes.

An interesting study on displays of affection found that people with high self-esteem engaged in more displays of affection and low self-esteem people engaged in fewer displays of affection. This may seem obvious, but the interesting part was that displays of affection made low self-esteem people uncomfortable and they believed that it made their partner uncomfortable to.

I mentioned a few times already that people with low self esteem do not want to have low self-esteem. This is true but it runs in conflict with another psychological need which is self-verification. Self-verification is our desire to have others confirm our own self-perceptions. Unfortunately for people with low self-esteem, the desire for self-verification often outweighs their need for others to believe they are good people. In turn, they will actively seek out information that confirms their negative beliefs (e.g., My crush ignored my text so that means they hate me and believe I'm ugly). This is called the double bind of low self-esteem.

Why does this matter? Surprise, surprise having low self-esteem is extremely correlated to having clinical depression. But if we are looking at this from a dating perspective and not a mental health perspective then we can see that low self-esteem is a net negative in the dating world. People with low self-esteem are less likely to approach or initiate contact and more likely to sabbotage any relationships they may have.

Is a person stuck with low self-esteem forever? No. Nobody is doomed to a life of self-hatred.

Here is a small list of things to do to increase your self-esteem.

  1. Find what you're good at: Success boosts self-esteem
  2. Build positive relationships: Surrounding yourself with people who like you will counter the idea that you are a terrible person
  3. Try new things: Get out of your comfort zone. You won't always succeed, but you will never succeed if you don't try new things.

Sources:

This whole post is derived from my personal notes taken in my social psychology class last semester. I won't share my professors name because I don't want to doxx myself but all the information can be found in the following textbook: Social Psychology (14th Edition) by Branscombe and Baron. Also, a little bit of a brag, but I finished the class with one of the highest grades he’s seen is his decades of teaching.