We’ve been tossing around the term ’self-esteem’ for a long time in education and psychology, but what does it really mean? Is it the same thing as confidence? Can it be taught or improved? Let’s start with a basic definition of the term.

Before we get much farther in our discussion, then, let’s agree on a basic definition. Self-esteem is the belief each person has about whether or not they are valuable. If they don’t think they have much value, that’s referred to as ‘low self-esteem’. If, on the other hand, they see themselves as being valuable, they are thought to have ‘healthy self-esteem’.

Keeping that in mind, let’s move on to the way that poor or healthy self-esteem predicts whether a person will be successful in life. It may surprise you to know that recent research has raised questions about the beliefs that formed the ’self-esteem-based education movement’ of the past twenty five years.

You may already know that, beginning in California in the early 1980s, educators had formed curriculae around the concept that children who develop good self-esteem tend to resist peer pressure more successfully. That, in turn, has been thought to be an effective way of reducing drug use, high school dropout rates and teen pregnancy.

Millions of dollars have been invested in self-esteem-based education in the U.S. alone. The hoped-for end result is that the children receiving this instruction will be more responsible and less likely to fail in life.

But recent studies don’t support that notion. They actually found little evidence that people who registered high on the self-esteem scale are any more likely to resist peer pressure or to achieve success.

In fact, a large study by Brown University which was published in 2003 suggests that self-esteem follows success. What they found was that a marked increase in self-esteem occurred consistently when their subjects were able to accomplish their goals.

The second surprise, from that study, and others since, is that the most important factor in self-esteem seems to be the set of social values in which the person believes. To untangle that statement, let’s define social values as the agreed-upon valuable concepts in a society.

Said another way, one’s social values, or what one’s society determines to be valuable, create the basis for whether or not they feel that they, themselves, have an internal sense of value. For instance, if the society in which one lives places a high value on knowledge, and they have the capability to study and learn easily, then self-esteem increases as ‘measure-up’ to that social value.

So now, we’ve arrived back to our original question: what exactly, then, is self-esteem? Based on what we’ve discussed, our definition can now be: the value a person places on themselves in the context of their larger society and its values. It remains to be seen how that new definition will change the way healthy self-esteem is encouraged in children.