Module 04 · Self-Esteem
Where Does Your Self-Esteem Come From?自尊心的来源
Childhood Influences 童年影响
On this page, we're going to talk about what information self-esteem is based on. To start, let's remember that one of the ways we defined self-esteem was as a measure of our perceived self-worth. That definition suggests that anything that impacts our perceptions of our own self-worth is something that can create or modify our self-esteem. With that as a backdrop, it seems logical that a child’s interactions with their caregivers would have a strong influence on the development of their self-esteem. Research supports this supposition, with numerous studies showing that parental warmth and involvement in education are both predictors of higher self-esteem in children, whereas parental hostility predicts lower self-esteem (Krauss et al., 2020).
在这个页面上，我们将讨论自尊基于哪些信息。首先，让我们记住，我们定义自尊的一种方式是将它视为我们感知的自我价值的衡量标准。这个定义暗示，任何影响我们对自己价值感知的事物，都可能创造或改变我们的自尊。以此为背景，一个孩子与照顾者之间的互动似乎会对他们自尊的发展产生强烈影响。研究支持这一假设，许多研究表明，父母的温暖和教育参与是儿童更高自尊的预测因素，而父母的敌意则预测较低的自尊（Krauss 等人，2020 年）。
In addition to their role in influencing the early development of a child’s self-esteem, parents play a role in identifying for a child the dimensions upon which they should base their self-worth. That is, growing up in a family in which education is valued and positive accomplishments in school are rewarded and praised would cause a child to develop the idea that educational success is an important factor in determining their self-worth. Contrast this setting to a family environment where intellectual and educational successes are ignored. In this situation, academic achievement wouldn’t be seen by the child as a valuable component of their self-worth. In the former case, we would expect a positive educational achievement to bolster the child’s self-esteem, whereas, in the latter case, a positive achievement would have little effect on the child’s self-esteem.
除了影响孩子自尊心早期发展的作用外，父母还在帮助孩子确定他们应该基于哪些维度来建立自我价值方面发挥作用。也就是说，在一个重视教育、学校中的积极成就得到奖励和赞扬的家庭中成长，会使孩子形成教育成功是决定其自我价值的重要因素的观念。将这种环境与一个忽视知识和教育成功的家庭环境进行对比。在这种情况下，学术成就不会被孩子视为其自我价值的有价值组成部分。在前一种情况下，我们预计积极的教育成就将增强孩子的自尊心，而在后一种情况下，积极成就对儿童自尊心的影响微乎其微。
Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Factors 外在因素与内在因素
Notice that feelings of self-worth based on praise and academic achievement share an important characteristic: they arise from information about ourself that comes from outside of the self. That is, praise and academic achievement are extrinsic sources of information about our self-worth. Alternatively, intrinsic sources of information about our self-value, such as whether or not we view ourself as a virtuous person, do not depend on others. In general, having self-value—and, therefore, self-esteem—that is contingent upon external factors (called extrinsic sources of information; they include our physical appearance and our academic successes and failures) leaves us vulnerable to decreased self-esteem, negative emotions, and other negative effects on our well-being when we receive negative feedback on a self-relevant dimension (e.g., our application to graduate school gets rejected, our grade on an evaluation is unexpectedly negative; Crocker et al., 2003). Contrast this with having self-esteem primarily based on internal contingencies (e.g., feeling worthy of God’s love), which makes our self-esteem less reliant on the opinions of others, and thus more stable.
请注意，基于赞扬和学术成就的自我价值感具有一个重要的特征：它们源于来自自我之外的信息。也就是说，赞扬和学术成就是关于我们自我价值的外部信息来源。另一方面，关于我们自我价值的内在信息来源，例如我们是否将自己视为一个有德行的人，并不依赖于他人。总的来说，自我价值（因此，自尊）依赖于外部因素（称为外部信息来源；它们包括我们的外貌和学术上的成功与失败）会使我们在收到关于自我相关维度的负面反馈时（例如，我们的研究生院申请被拒绝，我们的评估成绩意外地负面；Crocker 等人，2003 年）容易受到自尊下降、负面情绪和其他对我们福祉的负面影响。与此相反，如果我们主要基于内部条件（例如，感觉值得上帝的爱）来建立自尊，这将使我们的自尊不那么依赖于他人的意见，因此更加稳定。
How does this information relate to the distinction between state and trait self-esteem that we made before? Its implication for state self-esteem is relatively straightforward. Whenever anything modifies our feelings of self-worth—for example, receiving positive feedback about a project that we worked on, or being criticized by a friend for always arriving late—our state self-esteem increases or decreases accordingly. What about trait self-esteem? The answer to that question is a bit more complicated, given that trait self-esteem is known to be stable, is built up over a long period of time, and is tied to other core aspects of our personality, such as extraversion (which is positively related to self-esteem) and emotional stability (which is negatively related to self-esteem). However, that does not mean that there are no proposed interventions that can have positive effects on trait self-esteem.
这条信息如何与我们之前提到的状态自尊和特质自尊之间的区别相关？它对状态自尊的启示相对直接。每当任何事物改变我们的自我价值感——例如，对我们参与的项目获得积极反馈，或者因为总是迟到而被朋友批评——我们的状态自尊就会相应地增加或减少。那么特质自尊呢？鉴于特质自尊被认为是稳定的，是在长时间内建立起来的，并且与我们的个性其他核心方面（如外向性[与自尊正相关]和情绪稳定性[与自尊负相关]）相关联，所以对这个问题的答案要复杂一些。然而，这并不意味着没有提出可以对特质自尊产生积极影响的干预措施。
On the next reading page, we will look at two interventions that people have used to successfully increase feelings of well-being and positive emotionality, two factors associated with positive self-esteem.
在下一页阅读中，我们将探讨人们用来成功提升幸福感与积极情绪感的两种干预措施，这两个因素与积极的自尊心相关。