Topic: Is self-esteem a valid psychological concept?

Topic: Is self-esteem a valid psychological concept?

Self-esteem is fake news. Meta analysis of over 10,000 studies have only found weak evidence that higher levels of self-esteem result in better life outcomes like teen pregnancy, substance abuse or delinquent behaviour This means that educators have wasted an enormous amount of time and resources over the last 30 years developing self-esteem. The losses are not limited to the education system. Generations of students will continue to waste an order of magnitude more time and resources seeking self-esteem for no benefit throughout their life. The bleeding could have been stopped if psychologists, educators and promoters would have waited for more evidence and quickly dropped the concept when it was clear it wasn’t objectively valid. 

“The associations between self-esteem and its expected consequences are mixed, insignificant, or absent. The nonrelationship holds between self-esteem and teenage pregnancy, self-esteem and child abuse, self-esteem and most cases of alcohol and drug abuse. . . . If the association between self-esteem and behavior is so often reported to be weak, even less can be said for the causal relationship between the two.” (https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/truth-self-esteem)

Was self-esteem ever a valid psychological concept? Validity is a binary evaluation. A concept is either valid or it’s not at any moment in time. A concept can be valid at one point in time and invalid at another. From an objective point of view, if a concept is found to be longer valid, it was never valid to begin with however. This means that most valid concepts that we have today, will likely be shown to be invalid later which means that most concepts we have today are likely to be invalid. That the sun revolves around the Earth was always an invalid concept. However, it was subjectively valid a thousand years ago. So what do we mean when we say a concept is valid? A psychological concept (or model) is objectively valid if when all humans across all time and space assume it true they are are able to successfully predict and manipulate the external world. A psychological concept (or model) is subjectively valid if when individual humans it is true they are able to thrive. 

Self-esteem failed on both counts. It neither led to scientists being able to predict outcomes nor have individuals who believed in self-esteem flourished. It may have been once subjectively valid. If life is terrible enough, applying methods to develop self-esteem will not do much more harm and some of the methods might coincidently be very similar to methods recommended by a better concept. So some people starting a certain place will flourish and concept will be subjectively valid for this people for a time. A concept stops being subjectively valid when the subject becomes aware of another concept, that when assumed true, would lead to continued and greater flourishing - and it will be closer to an objectively valid concept. 

Is there concept that is more subjectively valid and more likely to be objectively valid? The Big 5 personality model which has stronger evidence behind its predictions and is theoretically more sound. Its current objective validity means that individuals aware of the model are more likely to flourish due to the principle that accurate and precise perception of the external world will better empower a conscious mind to replicate itself. At least - that has been my experience. 

So self-esteem is no longer a valid psychological concept for most people because its supporting evidence is weak and they are aware of the Big 5 model of personality. It’s an interesting conclusion that bad ideas can be subjectively valid for people unaware of better ideas which means the point of education is to offer concepts that the educators finds valid and persuade the student to find those concepts valid as well so that they can flourish - and their flourishing is our flourishing.