1. Measurement of Self-Esteem

There are a few things that can be reflected in the measurement of self esteem. Firstly, Rosenberg did a great job in creating an experiment to measure the level of self esteem in oneself even though his experiment might be affected by the self-personal sides and also culture. Speaking of culture, it is undeniable that people’s judgment about self esteem is quite different according to each customs in each country. Personally I think in Malaysia, high self esteem is not always favorable and sometimes when facing older people, having low self esteem is a wiser step because it shows that we are being humble. I also believe that self esteem need to be measured from time to time because the result can change based on the phase that a person is experiencing. For example, teenagers are a subject that usually has low self esteem while adults seem to have higher self esteem. When I was in high school, I always feel like a person of no worth and nothing to be proud of. This kind of mind-thinking usually hits me when I see people that I can call as perfect. I know that nobody is perfect but in this modern era, there are people that are at least 95-97 percent almost perfect. Some people are just born beautiful, rich, brilliant, kind and good at everything while I have nothing. Well, my best friend is the prettiest girl in the whole school and can you see how much her existence hits me alone? But hey, I still love her and she will forever be my best girl. However, as I grew up, I started to treasure myself. Maybe because I am a little bit more matured and plus, none of my friends in college looks like Miss Universe. I realized that self esteem can be boost when people stop comparing themselves with other people and leave small things that doesn’t matter.

Secondly, I agree that people’s self esteem is responsive to live event. I am socially awkward with boys since I entered an almost all-girls class. I have very little contact with boys and without I realize it, my social skills have been deteriorated. I used to think that boys doesn’t want to be friends with me but then when I was in MARA Camp, a boy from the next door class complimented me saying that I am such a good girl friend and his compliment makes me fluttering all days. As a result, I become braver to say hi to other guy friends and my self esteem when talking to different gender increase gradually. I also could see that my self esteem decrease when I am reflecting my failure. As an example, when I lose in a ‘forum’ competition, I felt so sad that it makes me feel depressed. Luckily I have friends that always supported me and that depression doesn’t last long. Basically, there are times in live where high self esteem is crucial while in some other situations, having low self esteem is better. People need to be wise in controlling their self esteem so that they can be favorable to themselves and also other people.

(Siti Hana Diyana)

Implicit Self-Esteem

Implicit self esteem is the feeling about self of which we are not consciously aware. Experiment had been studied by Dijksterhuis in 2004. And as for the result, implicit self esteem is higher in the participants compared to those in control group who were not exposed to self positive traits. In a simple word, people who always hear something good about her will have higher implicit self esteem rather than people who often hear someone compliment them.

From my experience, I got a friend that have a high self esteem. People like to compliment her. So, whenever other people said badly about her, she always ignore it because she didn’t think that negative statement was for her. So, she prefer to ignore it rather than think about it, because it will not affect her life at all. She always think positive about herself because she has high self esteem. People with high self esteem are less vulnerable to threat failure experience which will give a small affect to that people even though a thousand people talked badly about

(Nurul Afiqah)

2. Is High Self-Esteem always Beneficial?

Frankly said, I bet most individuals agree that the presence of low self-esteem is the root of problems such as drug abuse, poor school performance, depression and eating disorders.  I would say all these problems are logical when we say things about having low self-esteem. Living my life for almost 19 years, I must say that I have encountered numerous friends in school who had low self-esteem and unsurprisingly they suffered typical problems as students that they did not perceive themselves as academically performed students. Hence, they were most likely to have low confidence level when it came to exams, quizzes and tests. Besides, I believe we are all exposed to society’s beauty standard that stresses out that being skinny is beautiful. Therefore, people who perceive themselves not skinny enough to appear attractive or likable to the society will tend to have low self esteem and thus leading them to suffer from eating disorders such as Anorexia and Bulimia.
                                         

However, that is not the main point I would like to stress out. I am so convinced that having high-self esteem can also be disadvantageous to us. Why is that so? First of all, I believe that some of you might be a little confused that you are going to question me how is that even possible? All members of society worship and admire people with high-self esteem because they are mostly confident and committed to whatever they are doing. This might seem a bit ironic but some social psychologists do agree that having high self-esteem may also lead to problems such as narcissism, exhibitionism, self- aggrandizing, bullying and interpersonal aggression. After analyzing this theory, I would say that I agree with it because I have encountered a lot of situations that were somehow correlated with this particular theory. Studying at a boarding school, bullying is perhaps one of the most common disciplinary cases that hostel kids would commit. Typically, the seniors who think they are more superior than the juniors because of their age, would tend to act superiorly like dictators towards the juniors. They would ask their juniors to do chores such as washing their clothes, buy them food, iron their shirts and etc. Analyzing this theory also made me came across the term exhibitionism, which I had never heard before. Exhibitionism denotes an act to seek attention from other people and an obvious example is the act of showing one’s genital to other people. There is one particular friend of mine who has experienced this before when there was this one day after she parked her car outside of INTEC , an Indian man on a bike called her and she, without any hesitation, then approached him. After that, the man suddenly took his penis out from his pants and my friend was so scared that she ran towards the guard house and immediately lodged a report about that incident. That incident happened this year and she is still traumatized by it. This shows that people with high self-esteem can also behave negatively and in this situation we can see that the man is perhaps of his own genital that he felt like showing it off to everybody.

Relating this to the movie, Shrek, the characters that are portrayed to have high self-esteem are Lord Farquaad and Prince Charming. Both of them literally want to marry Princess Fiona because they wish to be the king.  Lord Farquaaad who perceives himself as the wealthiest man in the kingdom feels like he deserves to marry Princess Fiona and be the King. He implies his superiority on weak magical creatures and forces them to go out of the town. Princess Charming who also believes that he should be the king and probably thinks that he is the most good-looking man in the kingdom and deserves to marry someone of his choice. He also has the intention to inherit the thrown of the kingdom by marrying Princess Fiona. Besides, he also feels superior because his mother is a fairy god mother who possesses a powerful yet overwhelming magical power that can do almost everything.

In conclusion, I believe that high self-esteem is not always advantageous or beneficial to people who possess it.  Despite the beliefs that only people with low self-esteem suffer from severe personality or attitudinal problem, people with high self-esteem also suffer their own problems that some people might have never acknowledged. The society has always been concerned about people with incredibly low self-esteem but they disregard people who possess overly-high self-esteem. People with high self-esteem also might need a little attention from the society that they are also having their own problems .

 (Shazrul Hafiz Suhaime)

3.Do Men and Women Differ in Their Level of Self-Esteem?

We learn who we are through the reflections that we receive from the important people in our environment and it will determine the level of our self-esteem. Men and women have differences in personality including the level of self-esteem. How we view ourself are solely depends on what environment we live in. Some researchers said that women do have lower self-esteem compare to men. In this entry, I would bring you up on how can women and men have differences level of self-esteem according to four different factors. On my research preparing for presentation about this topic, I discovered that women and men have differences level of self-esteem due to the treatment that we received. Women are said to have greater impact on the reflected appraisal that they receive and men are more on social comparison. The reflected appraisal here means that how people responds to us and their perception towards us. However for men they are more on social comparison where they always compare themselves with other and they are not really care about other people perceptions.

After finding this fact, I just realized the level of my self-esteem and how I perceived myself among other people. I always think about other people perceptions. I don’t remember what date actually when I got the mark for my first Economics Quiz as I taking Microeconomics subject last semester. At first it was not a big deal to me although I just got 14/20. I thought it just enough as I actually cannot answers the questions given and most of the questions that I wrong were the questions that I did not know. Unfortunately, when my lecture said that there was a person who got 20/20 and I felt that most of person got higher mark for this quiz, I started to feeling down. I was not in a good mood anymore. I started to think negatively at that time. Furthermore, my close friend who sat beside me also got higher mark for that quiz., I felt ashamed with people around me though they don’t even are about my mark. I felt that I was the ‘stupid’ one in that class although actually no one ‘stupid’ in this world. I am a person that keep thinking about people perceptions to me. I don’t want people to judge me that I am not good or excellent like them. Now, I realized that my self-esteem is really in  lower level because I always compare myself to other people. I want to be like a Shrek that always has high self-esteem although he is ogre with ugly face and body. He always have confident in everything and just want to be himself.

Next, another factor that causes differences of self-esteem between men and women is the position of social class. Usually, social class will be measured using education, income and occupational status. In general, adults who have lower occupational status, income, and education tend to have lower levels of social esteem than their respective counterparts.  For instance, individuals who are employed in good jobs that are characterized by high autonomy, high prestige, and low routinization have higher levels of self-esteem. Women are seemed to have low self-esteem because they tend to be employed in poorly paid job and less reward. If we see higher position in multinational company are usually being holds by men. It is very rare to find women that become a board of director or chairman. Lack of opportunity for women in workforce sometimes lead them to compare themselves with the men and feel less motivated as they always need to work under men. However, some researchs state that if women and men are in the same professional field and have high position, women tend to have high self-esteem which is sometime can be same level with men.

From my experience, when I hold the position as the Secretary of AUSIA ( Australia University Students INTEC Associations), I felt more confidence to meet other people especially men and talk with them. Perhaps I did not realize when I started to have confidence to talk with the men that I never talk before but it naturally happened after I hold that position. Maybe this situation follows the ideas of self-esteem based on position. Sometimes, having a higher position in an organization helps us to shape ourselves as it affect our self-esteem and change the way we perceive ourself. We will proud with our achievement and being more successful person in this life. Reflection from Shrek movie, I could see that Dragon and Princess Fiona have high self-esteem although they are women because of their position. We can conclude that position that we have in society or any group will affect the level of self-esteem differently according to the gender.

In addition, self-esteem affected by appearance to one self especially women.  Women tend to value more on their self-appearance compared to men because appearance will be the first point of them being evaluated by others. From my experience, a week before the celebration of annual grand dinner, my friends and I went to the shopping complex looking for things we are going to wear on that night. Some of us were looking for new dress, accessories, hijab and shoes. We don’t want to look just simple on that precious night. Somehow, I could see we are likely want to compete each other who are the most prettiest on the annual dinner night. I believe that my male friends might do have a week of preparation for annual dinner but they cannot beat the girls. Besides, we are certainly our own worst critics: I always feel like I could lose my weight, I don’t like having my picture taken, I worry that people judge on my appearance. We want to look good in front of the other. Investing in our appearance is not a bad thing and it actually essential for everyone because our physical is one of our self. However, in our culture today, we tend to focus more on external while neglecting the internal such as attitude and how we present our behaviour in the public. Clearly, I can conclude that the higher the degree of self-appearance the higher the level of confident in oneself.

Next, self-esteem was linked with various psychological and social problems. People with low self-esteem have been associated with negative behaviour, depression, loneliness and shame. For example, I have watched a program in television which tell story about Kak Nik, 8 years old girl who suffered from Tetra-amelia syndrome, disorder characterised by the absence of all four limbs. Kak Nik’s parent worried about their daughter who experience moodiness, and lose hope to live with the disabilities that make her different with everyone else. Then, her parents tried so hard to contact Nick Vujicic, a successful motivater from Australia that suffered the same syndrome as their daughter had. This would help Kak Nik to survive for her entire of her live and become more independent in the future especially after her parents are away. They have been struggling to gain the level of confident in their daughter. Undoubtedly, psychological well being is important to us in order to have positive relationship, to feel competent and to have meaning and purpose in life.

On the other hand, there is no difference in the level of self-esteem between male and female in the preadolescence stage. This can be showed through the children, they are not feel ashamed to play with the opposite gender however when they are starting to grow up the feeling of shy began to embrace in themselves. For an example, I was closed with my same age male cousin during my childhood. There is one old picture was captured showing our closeness together during the past which his arm was put on my shoulder. However, today when we meet in the village, we are rarely to speak among each other. This shows that declining in self-esteem resulted from increasing in number of ages.

Conclusion

Self-esteem depends on how much devaluation the group experienced whether in factor of treatment receive, position, psychological and appearance. The stronger relationship you had, the higher the level of self-esteem will be. We acknowledge ourselves through the reflections we have received from the feedback of people in our environment. Sometimes, thinking too much about others perception will lower our self esteem and make us become demotivated to achieve our goals. Self esteem is about how we value and appreciate ourselves. However, high self-esteem may have limits in terms of lack of sensitivity to the limitations of others, resulting in interpersonal problems. People with high self esteem may have less care about others. This attitude should not be practiced by everyone as we live in society especially a multicultural society like Malaysia. Gaining self-esteem is not wrong but it should be in our control. It is our responsibility to have a love and care toward each other so that we can live in harmony and peace with no discrimination.

(Nur Afifah & Wan Rawanis)