In a study by Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, she found that college kids today are more likely to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, while their test scores and hours spent studying are decreasing. Their tendency toward narcissism has also increased over the last 30 years.

Today I want to look at what I consider one of the sources of this trend: the unearned self-esteem movement.

Many years ago, when I was young psychology graduate student studying with Nathaniel Branden, I remember him talking one day about how he had been invited to be part of The California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem, lead by California State Assemblyman John Vasconcelos.

Nathaniel couldn’t see why he would be involved in that, since he did not see a role for government in the development of self-esteem. Nonetheless, the Task Force carried on, and created guidelines for building “self-esteem” in a way that Branden would never have advocated.

According to a New York Times article about the study group in October of 1986:

Mr. Vasconcellos, a 53-year-old Democrat, is described by an aide as “the most radical humanist in the Legislature.” Mr. Twombly said the study group was an attempt by the Assemblyman to translate into political action his 20 years of “personal emotional work” in various forms of psychological therapy at Esalen Institute near Big Sur and other places.

”I’ve explored a lot of alternative ways of being and relating,” Mr. Vasconcellos said. The bill that created the 25-member study group says its aim is to compile “the world’s most credible and contemporary research regarding whether healthy self-esteem relates to the development of personal responsibility and social problems” such as crime, drug abuse, teen-age pregnancy and welfare dependency.

Whether it was Vasconcelos’s intention or not, the model of self-esteem that the task force has effectively encouraged was the one that my favorite social psychologist Roy Baumeister showed did nothing to improve a person’s happiness, success, or character.

The common definition of self-esteem, and the one used for research purposes, is, “feeling good about yourself.” By that definition, the population with one of the highest levels of self-esteem is criminals (I’m not kidding, they feel great about themselves).

In contrast, Branden’s self-esteem is “the reputation we build with ourselves;” or put another way, it’s earned self-esteem.

Branden’s self-esteem is much more complex and involves many different facets – which also makes it very difficult to study as a distinct quality. In fact, self-esteem as Branden describes it has not been studied directly (though elements of it , such as willpower, self-regulation, self-efficacy, and – as we’ll see in a moment – mindsets, have), which makes the term difficult to use as he used it.

The differences between these two visions could not be more consequential. It is the difference between inflating a student’s grades so that their self-esteem is not injured, versus giving a student clear and honest feedback on their performance so they can take the action they need to improve.

It’s the difference between giving awards for participating in an event, versus giving awards for actual performance.

It’s the difference between praising a child for simply being in a situation and praising them for the effort and focus they bring to a situation.

It’s the difference between encouraging a fixed trait mindset versus a growth mindset.

Carol Dweck’s research on mindsets is relevant here. A fixed trait mindset is one where you think of yourself in terms of set qualities, like intelligence, talent, attractiveness, etc. A growth mindset is where you think of yourself in terms of what you do, the quality of your attention, effort, and willingness to learn.

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One day in East Africa, deep in our primitive past, an exceptional innovator carved a palm sized, pear shaped, razor sharp axe head out of stone. This must have revolutionized the ability for he or she and their band of hunter-gatherers to hunt, to butcher food… and to wage war on their neighbors.

This was about seventeen hundred thousand years ago, long before homo sapiens had even appeared on earth. Over time, others learned to copy this stone ax head, and the innovation spread throughout the relatively small population of pre-humans, known as homo erectus, or “upright man.”

The identical design of what archaeologists call Acheulean hand stone axes has been commonly found at many different archaeological sites throughout different eras, and up to about a hundred thousand years ago they were still being made, in exactly the same way, by our homo-sapiens ancestors.

For over a million and a half years, as far as we can tell from the archeological record, this was the extent of human and pre-human innovation. That was it! Nothing new for over 1,600,000 years.

Then, something revolutionary happened; something that changed the nature of humanity and transformed our cultural growth as a species… the world’s first jewelry was invented.

One day, about 90,000 years ago, something new appeared in the heart of Africa. Beads. Beads, made of the shells of a tiny marine snail called Nassarius gibbosulus, painted, and with tiny holes drilled in them.

What was truly transformational, though, wasn’t the beads themselves, it was the mystery they presented. How did beads originally found at the seashore of Mediterranean Algeria make their way hundreds of miles to the south? That would be crossing the Sahara Desert now, but back then it was a lush, green hunter’s paradise.

They were brought there. Not as some one-time haul from a murderous raiding party – which would have been the most likely way up to that point for one tribe to get something from another tribe.

No, these beads were part of something new; something that from any evidence we currently have, had never been seen on the face of the earth before; something we take completely for granted today:

Trade.

This was the first evidence of humans trading with one another. These shells weren’t just jewelry, they were likely used as the first money, as well.

Sure, lots of animals do reciprocal things, like picking the lice out of each other’s hair, or helping each other with a hunt. But to trade different things or actions of different value was brand new. I have some meat, you have some berries, and we figure out a mutually agreeable amount of each to barter so we’re both happy… win/win.

But then to use something as a medium of exchange – the money we use today, or the painted Nassarius shells our distant ancestors used in Africa – accelerated the benefits of trade exponentially.

Eventually, our ancestors developed intricate trade networks, inspiring innovation and cooperation that had never been possible before. In a very real sense, trade is what has made us human. It encourages the better angels of our nature – to borrow the title of a magnificent book by Steven Pinker on why violence has declined.

Trade, among other things, encourages curiosity about other people – and therefore empathy. It encourages us to create what’s called a “theory of mind,” the ability to imagine what another person’s internal world might be like.

When we trade, there’s a benefit to wondering what other people – who are not members of our immediate family or tribe – are interested in, how they communicate, what their habits and customs are, how to approach them in a peaceful and respectful manner, and what we might bring to them to exchange for something they have that we want.

Trade encouraged a whole dimension of curiosity that would never have occurred to our ancestors otherwise.

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There’s a great misunderstanding about what it means to live a happy life, and it can be summed up in the popular symbol of the smiley face.

Now, I like to smile. I love feeling that kind of glowing, delighted state of emotional bliss. It’s wonderful to be full of joy and love and laughter. But feeling those things doesn’t in and of itself make for a happy life; and just because you don’t happen to feel them in the moment doesn’t mean you are unhappy.

In fact, if simply feeling those emotions all the time was what constituted happiness, then it would be a simple matter to find the right combination of drugs that would perpetually bathe our neurons with joyful chemicals, and we could all be perpetually happy.

But this smiley face view of happiness is not the whole story, at all. And we all know it.

A happy life is an engaged life, an active life, an ethical life, a life that you create; a life you can be happy about, a life you can be proud of.

It is not a perfect life.

If you have a view of happiness that tells you that to feel sad or angry or afraid is a sign of failure, or a moral shortcoming of some kind, you’re actually setting yourself up for a miserable bind. The “negative” emotions of life are just as important as the “positive” emotions, in their own way.

Nobody wants to walk around feeling afraid all the time… or angry, or sad. These feelings, in and of themselves, don’t make you happy either.

But they do provide you with important information about what is going on. Used well, they are responses to actual circumstances.

• Anger is often a response to trespass – if somebody crosses a line where your territory or integrity or values are being violated or crossed, anger lets you know to check this out, and it gives you the emotional energy to push back and protect what matters to you.
• Fear is often a response to perceived or imagined danger. The challenge becomes discerning whether a given feeling of fear is in response to something real or imagined.
• Sadness is often a response to loss. The challenge with sadness can be to let it run its course, and allow other, more positive feelings to come back around.

This list is not exhaustive, of course, but it can give you an idea of the value of some of the emotions that are not as pleasant as the “happier” emotions. (I go into much greater – and very practical – detail in my book, the Mastering Emotions, Moods and Reactions Workbook)

A happy life includes the entire range of feelings, an expansive vision of possibilities, and a grounded and accurate relationship to reality. To navigate your emotional life is to integrate what you feel with a clear assessment of reality, and to choose what you want to do with the information and experience contained within your emotional life.

You don’t want to dwell on and become overwhelmed by fear, or sadness, or anger, but neither do you want to avoid these feelings, or judge them as some kind of moral failing.

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