Meaning Of Self Esteem

- Meaning of self esteem
According to James William, “self-esteem is a personal judgment of self-worth that is determined by how well individuals evaluate themselves on dimensions that they personally value.” James noted that “Our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.” (James, 1985, p. 54).
- Factor affecting self esteem
Actually, it can be reliably measured that self-esteem is substantially different among such diverse countries as India, Argentina, South Korea, and the United States (Schmitt & Allik, 2005). What makes it different depends on several factors including demographic characteristics, namely, race, gender and age. Accordingly, there are several experiments and surveys conducted to find

For example, two experiments concluded that African Americans score higher than Whites in measure of self-esteem (Gray-Little & Hafdahl, 2000; Twenge & Crocker, 2002). It is also found out that Asians report the lowest self-esteem, and Latinos is between Whites and Asians (Twenge and Crocker, 2002). In addition, Schmitt and Allik (2005) found that people from Japan have lower self-esteem than United States people.
To explain for this difference, it is important to consider the possibility that different culture and traditions affect patterns of behavior (e.g., Yamagishi, Hashimoto, & Schug, 2008; cf., Kim & Markus, 1999). Actually, collectivist culture, culture stressing benefit of the group which is traditionally culture of East Asian, may play a role (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). In the collectivist culture, socialization practices do not emphasize high self-esteem expression since it could run counter to culturally valued attributes promoting group harmony (Kim & Markus, 1999). On the other hand, the individualistic country such as the United States stresses the expression of high self-esteem by placing value on freedom and individual rights (Chao, 1995). Consequently, it explains why Asian Americans score lower than Whites or African Americans on self-report measures. Accordingly, research has shown that Asian Americans are more collectivistic

There is evidence that the Rosenberg self-esteem scale has acceptable psychometric properties and similar relations with Extraversion and Neuroticism in Japan, India, and the United States (Schmitt & Allik, 2005). Indeed, Cai et al. (2007) shows that Chinese individuals feel positively about themselves but cultural norms related to modesty presses and limited their positive feeling. Likewise, implicit measures of self-esteem are the same between people from Asian countries and the United States (e.g., Yamagishi et al., 2008).
The cultural press theory can also be used to explain why African Americans report higher levels of self-esteem than White Americans. To clarify, African-American families strive to plant self-esteem in youth so that they can cope with discrimination (reviewed in Hughes et al., 2006). Likewise, African Americans stress on their “desirable distinctiveness” (Gray-Little & Hafdahl, 2000, p. 26) and therefore report higher levels of self-esteem. To conclude, it can be proposed that African Americans are socialized to communicate pride and Asians communicates