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Psychology of communication: the self
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Psychology of communication: the self
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If you have looked through the sections on self-image, you'll be aware of the close relationship between self-image and self-esteem.
The high position of esteem needs in Maslow's hierarchy of needs reflects the importance accorded by him to self-esteem in our quality of life. Without high self-esteem, we cannot, according to Maslow, proceed to realize our full potential ('self-actualization'). Equally, this importance is reflected in the work of the other great humanist psychologist, Carl Rogers, who was concerned to afford his clients unconditional positive regard. In his view this is a fundamental human need. Before you can accept yourself, you need to see that others accept you.
To a very large extent, our knowledge of who we are comes from the feedback we gain from others (the self as I believe others see mein Dimbleby's and Burton's model). If we frequently experience negative feedback, our self-esteem will suffer. This is elegantly demonstrated in a study by Gergen, in which students were interviewed by a graduate student. During the interview, they were asked to evaluate themselves at various points. When they evaluated themselves positively, they received subtle positive feedback; when they evaluated themselves negatively, the interviewer remained silent. Throughout the interview their self-esteem increased steadily, in comparison with a control group which was not subjected to similar discriminating feedback. (Gergen, undated). This, incidentally, raises interesting questions about the conception most of us have that we are individual, autonomous selves. To what extent can we maintain that we have some kind of 'core self', when it transpires that our notion of our self is so greatly constructed by the communication we have with others? The post-structuralist or postmodern position on this is generally that the whole concept of the bourgeois individual subject was a myth. For further comment on this, see the section on the 'decentred subject'.
We are of course selective in who we gain feedback from. We will tend to frequent people who give us the feedback we seek and avoid those who don't (though there is evidence that we don't necessarily always seek positive feedback, sensible though that would be - see below). If people I think are wallies see me as a wally, that's no skin off my nose. But if people I value see me as a wally, that's likely to dent my self-esteem.
Such people are likely to be rôle models or members of my reference groups. We actively make comparisons between our performance and theirs. Whether we choose to compare ourselves with people who are slightly better or slightly worse at something than we are can have a significant influence on our self-esteem.
Some theorists also refer to rôle models as significant others, though some see a significant other as a person who plays a major rôle in our lives but whom we don't necessarily wish to emulate (unlike a rôle model). Thus, for example, we may see significant others as our teachers, our parents or our bosses. We may not like them much, but since the behaviours we engage in are so frequently judged by them, they are an important source of feedback on our performance and can therefore have a serious influence on our self-esteem.
Our self-esteem affects our behaviour, our understanding of how the world works and where we fit into it and our communication performance.
People whose self-esteem is low will tend to explain any successes they have by attributing them to luck rather than to their own abilities. People with high self-esteem will tend to attribute their successes to qualities within themselves.
The psychologist Julian Rotter noted that some people believe they are autonomous. They believe that they are in control of their lives and take responsibility for what happens to them. They believe, in other words, that the locus of control is internal to them and not external. There is evidence that it is stressful for people to believe that they have no control over their lives (that the locus of control is external to them). It doesn't matter much what is objectively the case, what they believe is what matters and what people believe is often pretty weird!
For instance, the sociologist Langer allowed people to choose their own numbers in a lottery; others were allocated numbers at random The winning number was of course chosen at random, but those who had been allowed to choose their own numbers believed they had a significantly better chance of winning. They felt a lot more positive about the lottery than the other group - totally irrational, but at least it made them feel good.
Schultz conducted a study of old people in a home. Some were permitted to choose their own visiting times; the others were told when visitors were allowed. Those who could choose enjoyed better morale and physical health. Another study of old people going to live in a home asked them how much choice they felt they had about going to live there. Those who felt they had freedom of choice actually lived longer than those who didn't.
Thus a person whose self-esteem is low will tend to feel that what happens to them is beyond their control, even any successes they have. Schultz's study suggests that that belief is likely to have a major effect on their mental and physical health. It might, for example, in part explain the higher suicide rate amongst the unemployed. It also probably offers an explanation of the success of extremist political groups in times of high unemployment, since Hovland found that people with low self-esteem are more easily persuaded than those with low self-esteem.
One should, however, not imagine that it is simply the illusion of control or of its lack which is always important here. Those people who are at the mercy of arbitrary authority and are unable to express their anger and frustration are the most likely to suffer high blood pressure across the social spectrum. Not surprisingly, since those lowest in the social pecking order will most probably be in such a position, black males in the USA have been ound to have higher blood pressure than white males. (Harburg et al. (1973))
The notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy is part of the accepted wisdom in Communication Studies. It has been demonstrated by Swann and Read that, whatever our level of self-esteem we will tend to seek out feedback which confirms that level. Thus, in Swann's and Read's experiments people were put into groups where others wrote evaluations of them. Those people whose self-esteem was high spent most time reading the positive evaluations of them; those with low self-esteem spent most time on the negative evaluations.
This feeds into the notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we don't think much of ourselves, we are likely actively to seek feedback which shows that others don't think much of us either. We are in fact likely to behave in such a way as to cause such feedback.
If we don't think much of our abilities at, say, English, we're likely to write pretty rough English in exams simply because we lack the faith in our ability to produce better.
People with low self-esteem may well communicate less than those with high self-esteem. They will be unwilling to take risks in social encounters and are unlikely to appear confident, persuasive and convincing. They may well speak hesitantly and will often over-use the speech habits of the group which they seek approval from, for example frequently injecting 'like' or 'actually' into their speech.
People with high self-esteem will speak confidently and fluently and will generally be willing to take the risk of admitting when they're wrong, which can contribute considerably to their persuasiveness. They will also be more willing to take the risk of self-disclosure (see the section on the Johari window), which can encourage people to 'spill the beans' to them in return.
Generally, people with healthy self-esteem will somewhat overestimate their good qualities when compared with other people's ratings of them. That's not a bad thing, since, as we have seen, self-esteem is related to mental and physical health.
If you want to try this for yourself, there's an entertaining little exercise you can try, either with a friend or with a group of others, say in your Communication class: 
Generally speaking, those who have 'healthy' self-esteem will tend to take the credit for positive behaviours or outcomes, but reject responsibility for negative ones. This is generally termed 'self-serving bias'.
Self-serving bias seems to consist of two components:
Consciousness
Personality
Identity
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