Nigel 
August 19th,2009
A book I plan to read
On 29 June 2008 three youths chased and killed 16 year-old Ben Kinsella in East London,UK. They were angry because Ben had supposedly shown ‘disrespect’to one of them.
How can people who’ve often done little to justify respect be so sensitive to disrespect? The answer links with a some rather odd research findings from the last century,and brings into question one of our modern parenting and teaching policies.
Over the last sixty years in developed countries there’s been an increase in anxiety,depression and related mental disorders. I understand that teenage suicidal feelings and behaviour such as self-cutting have become more common.
Yet at the same time standard research into self-esteem has shown a dramatic ‘improvement’. See below for some details.
This prompted thoughtful investigation,and the upshot was the discovery that there are two types of people who do well on the original self-esteem tests. Here’s how Wilkinson and Pickett (see below) put it:
In one category,high self-esteem went with positive outcomes and was associated with happiness,confidence,being able to accept criticism,an ability to make friends,and so on.
This type of self-esteem is based on a fairly well-founded sense of confidence,a reasonably accurate view of your strengths in different situations,and an ability to recognise your weaknesses.
But there was another group who scored high self-esteem. They were people who showed tendencies to violence,to racism,who were insensitive to others and were bad at personal relationships.
This group of people are defensive,deny weakness in themselves,and seem to talk themselves up internally to a fragile state of high self-esteem. They show an excessive preoccupation with themselves,with success,and with their image.
This type of artificial self-esteem (now often called narcissism) is obviously dangerous and unwise,though very tempting to young people these days with unfair pressures from media and advertising. It’s also not surprising that when someone who copes with life solely by creating this fragile and false sense of worth finds it threatened they lash out and sometimes kill.
I’ve put this post in the ‘monochrome and blue’category because self-esteem can be such an important factor with people who get depression. There’s a lot more to say.
Question to chew:are we encouraging the healthy type of self-esteem in our children,or might our methods be creating the destructive version?
Extra notes 1
Here are a couple of examples from the 2006 book ‘Generation Me’by Joan M.Twenge,Ph.D. (cover shown above):
In the 1950s only 12% of teenagers (in the USA?) agreed with the statement ”I am an important person”. By the late 1980s this had risen to 80%.
Twenge has also shown that by 2006 two-thirds of American college students scored above the 1982 average narcissism score.
I haven’t read her book yet (I’m quoting from another book) but I intend to.
Extra notes 2
The quotes above are from the excellent 2009 book ‘The Spirit Level’by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. I’m not quite half way through but already it’s proved well worth the cost. I’ll review it when finished. Direct quotes from their book are in italics.
Here’s one of their many scatter graphs,reproduced with permission from their web site. Note that Italy is what I’d call a rogue value. It doesn’t fit the pattern,so should prompt further enquiry:was the research faulty in Italy,or is there some other factor in their country worth identifying?
One of the scatter graphs from Wilkinson and Pickett's excellent book 'The Spirit Level'
