Self Esteem
...SELF-PRESENTATION AND
SELF-ESTEEM.
As people's outcomes in life depend heavily on how others perceive and evaluate them, they
are motivated to convey certain impressions of themselves to others and to refrain from
conveying other, undesired impressions. Thus, no matter what else they may be doing,
people typically monitor and control their impressions, i.e. a process known as:
self-presentation. A great deal of human behaviour is, in part, determined or constrained
by people's concerns with others' impressions and evaluations of them.
Because all human beings are different from one another, the thought process used which
results in the self-presentation of a person will also differ from person to person.
In this case the potential factor effecting the self-presentation of an individual is that of
the self-esteem of the individual. Self–esteem being: " An affective component of the self,
consisting of a persons' positive and negative self-evaluations." (Brehm, 1999).
Although most people have high self-esteem, there are various ways in which self-esteem
can be measured; for example when someone is referring to a persons condition at a
specific moment in time it is referred to as a "state". If the condition is something which
is an average over a period of time it is known as a "trait". Someone who has low
self-esteem as a trait is considered to be worse off than a person who is in a
state of low self-esteem. Low self esteem is though to have several side affects, both
mental and physical which inevitably affect the self-presentation of a person.
Low self esteem can lead onto other ailments of negativity such as: anxiety and depression.
Once low self-esteem sets into a person it triggers off a self-defeating cycle in which negative
expectations impair performance, which in turn reinforces...
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