Self-Esteem Research, Theory, and Practice Toward a Positive ...

48 SELF-ESTEEM RESEARCH, THEORY, AND PRACTICEthe experiencing subject (subjectivity, which is to say “of the subject” inthis case), lived reality, and the fundamental structures of experience.This time, there is an increase in the descriptive richness offered by thequalitative methods as we move toward the far left, which culminates inthe more rigorous techniques of classical phenomenological psychology.It is interesting to reflect on the metaphorical implications of theterms “left” and “right” because in a real sense they are perfectly balancedmirror images of one another. For example, it may be no accident that theleft side of the diagram becomes more liberal, which is to say a “softer,”Platonic, or idealistic approach to knowledge; whereas the right side connotesa certain conservative, “harder,” Aristotelian, or realistic approach(Mruk & Hartzell, 2003). Therefore, it is important to make it clear thatneither side of the line should be seen as good or bad: For as we have seen,such simple dichotomies do not work well when trying to understand theparadoxes and complexities of human behavior. Rather, the importantquestion concerning scientific methods and paradigms is whether onetechnique is more suitable to a particular task than another. If we want toknow whether a self-esteem enhancement program is effective, forinstance, the methods of psychology practiced in the natural science paradigmmake good sense because in this case it is important to identify andmeasure outcomes in terms of causes and effects. If, however, we want toknow what self-esteem actually is in terms of how it is lived by real peoplein everyday life, then the human science paradigm is more useful and validbecause it is able to access the lived world of experience more directly.Phenomenological MethodsWe have already investigated traditional methods for researching selfesteemfrom the paradigm of psychology practiced as a natural science,so let us now examine the qualitative paradigm by looking at the methodsused by modern phenomenological psychology. There are several reasonsto look at this material when investigating the psychology ofself-esteem. For one thing, it is difficult to dismiss the value of paying attentionto the qualities of experience in this field. For example, Harter (1999)uses the term “phenomenology” to remind us that even if we wish to dismisssuch “fuzzy” or subjective aspects of self-esteem as “non-scientific,”we cannot do so because self-esteem and its components “do representa phenomenological reality for individuals” (p. 192). In later work shesaid,However, it is very important to emphasize that, in our zeal for parsimoniousexplanatory models, we must not ignore the fact that the phenomenologicalself-theory as experienced by children, adolescents, and