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

Self-Esteem Research Problems and Issues 49adults is not necessarily parsimonious. Self-evaluations, including globalself-worth, are very salient constructs in one’s working model of self and,as such, can wield powerful influences on affect and behavior. Thus, thechallenge is to develop models that identify the specific antecedents of differentoutcomes while preserving the critical role of self-representationsas phenomenological mediators. (Harter, 2003, p. 635)Devos and Banaji (2003) made a similar point when discussing anindividual’s immediate, non-reflective reaction to various events. Suchphenomenological experience, they noted, is an important factor inexperimentally contrived situations but is usually not taken into accountby researchers who do such work.However, the term “phenomenology” is not only used in a descriptivesense as we have just seen. It is also used as a technical term thatrefers to an entire approach to psychology, one that goes beyond meresymptomology or only subjective experience. Giorgi’s work (1971, 1984)is especially helpful in this regard because he was also trained in traditionalempirical psychology. This approach begins by pointing out whatphenomenological psychology is not to be mistaken as. Modern phenomenologicalpsychology is not introspectionism because we want toinvestigate the structure of a given experience, not just a particular incidenceof it. Individual experience, I like to say to my students, is a goodstarting place, but unless we are working in a clinical setting, a sample ofone cannot take us far in terms of knowledge. What if, for example, theperson whose experience was used turned out to be emotionally upset atthe time the experience was described or under the influence of a drugsuch as alcohol or a psychotic state? Although it is true that investigatinga person’s experience of something by having him or her describe it is thebeginning of phenomenological research, that is only the first step.Phenomenological inquiry is interested in understanding both how anexperience or phenomenon is lived concretely in a person’s life and howit is that a certain experience is possible in the first place. Instead ofmerely analyzing components of an experience as we might with contentanalysis, phenomenology attempts to describe what gives rise to theseelements in a way that allows them to form a particular type of humanexperience.Giorgi also pointed out that, contrary to some characterizations,phenomenological methods are not “anti-scientific.” Quite the contrary:as we just indicated, phenomenological description and analysis are justas rooted in the scientific method as naturalistic or traditional psychology,a point that I try to make throughout this book. Indeed, qualitativemethods can actually be very formal as we move toward the extreme leftof the continuum.