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Self esteem in communication


Self-esteem, in regard to communication, is the evaluative element of the perception of oneself. It is self-appraisal, your perception of self-worth, attractiveness, and social competence.

There are three primary influences on self-esteem: reflected appraisal, social comparison, and contingencies of self-worth. Reflected appraisal refers to messages you receive from others that assess your self-concept. For example, we are not able to believe that we are smart if the ones who are important in our lives tell us that we are slow or dumb. Social comparison is evaluating ourselves by comparing our own abilities, attributes, and accomplishments to those of other people. When we surround ourselves with others whom we perceive to be superior to us, our self-esteem tends to diminish, while when we surround ourselves with others whom we perceive to be not as talented as us, our self-esteem tends to inflate. Lastly, contingencies of self-worth is how our self-esteem is influenced by what is perceived as most important to us feeling good about ourselves. For example, one person's self-esteem could be highly contingent on doing well in academics and having a lot of friends whereas another person's self-esteem could be highly contingent on their performance in athletics and adherence to moral standards.

Individuals protect their self-esteem by exercising a self-serving bias, which is the tendency to attribute successful behavior to oneself but to assign external circumstances to one's unsuccessful behavior. For example, a football wide-receiver will give himself all of the credit for a miraculous catch but will blame the quarterback for a dropped one. The tendency to emphasize one's accomplishments and downplay one's failures is common. People will be unlikely to learn new skills or gain knowledge unless they become mindful of this tendency.

Optimal self-esteem comes from an individual achieving significant accomplishments without expecting a reward. It is the unconscious effort to please others without expecting anything in return. This is unlikely to occur when one places oneself at the mercy of other people's appraisals. Optimal self-esteem develops, paradoxically, when one concentrates on accomplishing one's goals and dreams, rather than acting in order to build self-esteem.


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