My partner Carol brought home the Winter, 2005, number of Stanford Social Innovation Review, which seems aimed at people like me: “…Stanford Social Innovation Review presents the best in research- and practice-based knowledge to help the people who do the important work of improving society do it even better.” An awkward sentence, but a goal that intrigues me.

If, like many of my readers, you work in a socially responsible job that makes you feel “burned out,” you will want to read the article on “Reversing Burnout,” which is available for free online [link]. It’s a good article, but I was even more interested in an article titled “Rethinking self-esteem: Why non-profits should stop pushing self-esteem and start endorsing self-control,” by Roy Baumeister.

I know I have been losing any interest in promoting self-esteem in my work as a minister. It has seemed to me that promoting self-esteem never gets you anywhere; in spite of the seeming consensus among psychologists, gaining additional self-esteem doesn’t seem to solve any other human problems. In a review of relevant academic literature, Baumeister found that in fact promoting self-esteem can be counterproductive:

…[S]everal close analyses of the accumulated research have shaken many psychologists’ faith in self-esteem. My colleagues and I were commissioned to conduct one of these studies by the American Psychological Society, an organization devoted to psychological research. These studies show not only that self-esteem fails to accomplish what we had hoped, but also that it can backfire and contribute to some of the very problems it was thought to thwart. Social sector organizations should therefore reconsider whether they want to dedicate their scarce resources to cultivating self-esteem. In my view, there are other traits, like self-control, that hold much more promise. [p. 36]

Baumeister’s review of relevant research finds that Americans routinely test very high for self-esteem, and indeed that we “overrate and overvalue ourselves.” Nor do researchers find that traditionally marginalized groups — e.g., African Americans and women — score significantly lower on self-esteem measures. Problems like racism and sexism do not seem to have a strong link to self-esteem

In another example, correlations between self-esteeem and good grades are merely correlations, not causal relationships, says Baumeister:

…a review of more than 100 studies with more than 200,000 students as subjects confirmed that there is a positive correlation between self-esteem and school performance.

While these findings fueled the belief that high self-esteem leads to good grades, many scientists were skeptical. Most people who deal with statistics know that just because A and B are correlated does not mean that A causes B….

[Social scientists] found that students’ self-esteem rose after getting good grades and fell after getting bad grades. In contrast, they did not find that people’s grades improved after their self-esttem rose, nor did they find that people’s grades dropped after their self-esteem fell. In other words, good grades were the horse and self-esteem was the cart, not the other way around….

If self-esteem is a result, not a cause, of good schoolwork, then enhancing self-esteem is a waste of time in the pursuit of better classroom performance….

Baumeister’s review of the relevant literature also turned up some other interesting things: self-esteem doesn’t lead to better interpersonal relationships; lack of self-esteem does not lead to violence (instead, “most aggressors have high opinions of themselves”); narcissists do not suffer from low self-esteem on the inside; there is “no relationship between self-esteem and early onset of sexual behavior”; alcohol and drug use are not linked to self-esteem.

I am actually relieved to hear all this; as I said earlier, it confirms what I have already suspected. I know some people have felt that curriculum units on self-esteem were appropriate for children’s religious education, but I never felt self-esteem was worth teaching in Sunday school (no, not even in OWL classes). I know people feel that one goal of pastoral counseling is to bolster self-esteem, but I have believed that the purpose of holding someone in “unconditional positive regard” is to inculcate hope and lead persons towards forgiveness.

Instead of self-esteem, Baumeister advocates promoting self-control:

[S]elf-control can actually help one become a better person, as opposed to just regarding oneself as a better person. Indeed, self-control sounds a lot like what people used to call character: the ability to live up to goals and ideals, to resist temptations, to honor obligations, and to follow through on difficult tasks and projects. [p. 41]

We might see a distinct rise in productivity of church committees if we stopped promoting self-esteem and started promoting self-control. However, I am wary about jumping on some self-control bandwagon. I prefer to take a non-reductionistic view of human life: we must strive to be well-rounded, whole beings. Such a wholistic view will continue to guide my thinking about religious education and pastoral care.

In any case, a very provocative article from Stanford Social Innovation Review — a journal which I suspect I will find myself reading regularly.