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Self-Esteem Essay

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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 …show more content…

This behaviour is seen as a face-saving defence mechanism against failure for people low in self-esteem as proved the experiment: “Self-handicapping: To protect or Enhance Self-Esteem” (Tice, 1991). This is an experiment where participants worked on a task that supposedly measured intelligence. When participants were focused on succeeding, those with high self-esteem practised less. When participants were led to become fearful of failure, those with low self-esteem practised less. This difference may reflect a desire to maximise the self-presentation of high ability by appearing to succeed despite minimal preparatory effort.

Another stage, which can follow low self-esteem, is that of self-awareness. People are not usually self-focused, but certain situations predictably force us to turn inward and become the objects of our own attention. Actions such as looking in the mirror, standing before an audience, watching ourselves on video camera or even talking about ourselves can put us in a state of heightened self-awareness that leads us naturally to compare our behaviour to some standard. We often find ourselves falling short of that standard which temporarily reduces our self-esteem. Thus “people often experience a negative mood state when placed in front of a mirror” (Hass &

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