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

16 SELF-ESTEEM RESEARCH, THEORY, AND PRACTICEindeed be rational to give up its pursuit, just as Crocker and Park (2003,2004) strongly recommend.Self-Esteem as WorthinessMorris Rosenberg (1965) introduced another way of defining self-esteemthat led to the development of the next major school of thought and workin the field. He defined it in terms of a particular type of attitude, one thatis thought to be based on the perception of a feeling, a feeling about one’s“worth” or value as a person. Hence,Self-esteem, as noted, is a positive or negative attitude toward a particularobject, namely, the self. . . . High self-esteem, as reflected in ourscale items, expresses the feeling that one is “good enough.” The individualsimply feels that he is a person of worth; he respects himself forwhat he is, but he does not stand in awe of himself nor does he expectothers to stand in awe of him. He does not necessarily consider himselfsuperior to others. (1979, pp. 30–31)One thing to notice about understanding self-esteem as an attitude isthat this view casts it in a light where cognition plays a greater role thanaffect. This shift to a more cognitive focus on self-esteem means that it ispossible to see it in terms of the psychology of attitude formation. Ofcourse, forming attitudes about the self is more complex than doing sofor anything else, largely because the perceiver is also the object of perception(Wylie, 1974). However, even then social scientists were reasonablyfamiliar with the formation of attitudes, how they work, andespecially how to measure them, which marked a significant change ofdirection in the field.The second distinguishing feature of defining self-esteem and workingfrom this position is that self-esteem is seen primarily in terms of acertain attitude. It is one that concerns a person’s evaluation or judgmentof their own “worth,” which brings the notion of values into playin self-esteem work. Whereas the chief value question for a competencebasedapproach is whether some particular domain of behavior mattersto an individual, one’s worth as a person is a more basic and rather universalissue. That is, it matters to most of us whether we are worthy orunworthy because one is generally recognized as being inherently moredesirable or “good” and the other is generally viewed as being distinctlyundesirable, inferior, or perhaps even “bad.” Of course, at some point,seeing self-esteem in terms of worthiness involves dealing with all theissues associated with cultural relativity and the question of whetherthere are any universal values. However, this approach also yields atleast one tangible power: Viewing self-esteem in terms of an attitude