10 Advantages and Disadvantages of Self-Esteem with Importance
Back to: Gender, School and Society- Unit 3
In the context of psychology, self-esteem is a term used to refer to a person’s overall subjective sense of personal value and worth. It can be defined as the amount of appreciation a person has for himself or herself regardless of the circumstances. A lot of factors may contribute to defining self-esteem, some of which include self-confidence, identity, sense of belonging, feeling of security, and feeling of competence. Few terms that are often used interchangeably with self-esteem are self-regard, self-respect, and self-worth.
Advantages of Self-Esteem
The benefits of self-esteem are as follows:
- Sense of Purpose: Self-esteem allows individuals to have a sense of purpose in life.
- Positive Outlook: People with high self-esteem can have a positive outlook on life.
- Realistic: Self-esteem enables people to accept themselves and accept reality as well.
- Value of Self: Self-esteem allows one to appreciate their value and worth regardless of the opinion of others.
- Communication Skill: Self-esteem helps individuals to improve their communication skills.
- Drive for Success: Self-esteem allows people to take on new challenges and achieve success in life.
- Ability to Form Relationships: Self-esteem enables people to form new and valuable relationships.
- Ability to Take on Challenges: Self-esteem removes the fear of new challenges from people and helps them be courageous.
- Resilience: Self-esteem develops individuals into resilient and self-sufficient human beings.
- High Motivation: Self-esteem never leads people to run out of motivation and it always keeps them highly motivated.
Disadvantages of Self-Esteem
The main disadvantages of self-esteem are as follows:
- Overconfidence: Too much self-esteem may lead people to become overconfident.
- Affects Performance: People with high self-esteem may sometimes face failures in their performance.
- The Pretense of Humility: Due to high self-esteem, some people may pretend their humble.
- Emotional Problems: Due to the suppression of problems, sometimes, individuals may face emotional problems.
- Delusional: The overflow of positivity may sometimes lead individuals with self-esteem to be deluded from reality.
- Lack of Confidence: Lack of self-esteem may also lead to a lack of confidence among individuals.
- Poor Academic Performance: Those who have poor self-esteem may face problems in academics as well.
- Substance Abuse: Those who have low self-esteem may be more prone to substance and drug abuse.
- Affects Career: Those with low self-esteem may not be able to take advantage of their career opportunities
- Emotional and mental health problems: Low self-esteem can lead to anxiety, stress, depression, and loneliness too.
The value and importance of self esteem and self-confidence
Introduction: Confidence and self-esteem are two important components of a person’s psychological well-being. Both play a crucial role in a person’s life, personality, social interaction, and overall success and happiness.
The importance of self-esteem:
Self-esteem is the basis for self-worth. It affects how you value yourself and see yourself. Here are some reasons why self-esteem is important:
- Emotional Challenges: People with healthy self-esteem are better prepared to cope with life’s challenges. They handle stress and setbacks well because they believe that challenges can be overcome.
- Healthy relationships: Self-esteem depends upon how you interact with others. Individuals with high self-esteem tend to have more satisfying and healthy relationships, as they are less likely to seek validation or have the ability to cope with toxic stress.
- Emotional Challenges: People with healthy self-esteem are better prepared to face life’s challenges. They deal wisely with stress and setbacks because they have the mental ability as well as the strength to believe that challenges can be overcome.
- Happiness: As it was very well said by some one that “Happiness comes from within” being self-esteemed can help to get more happiness and a sense of fulfilment.
- Achievement and Success: Higher self-esteem can lead to greater motivation and confidence in one’s abilities, which in turn can motivate one to set and achieve ambitious goals. For the one who wants to set aims and achieve ambitious goals one must have high self-esteem which will be able to keep them motivated and one of the benefits of self-esteem is that it can boost up one’s confidence in their abilities and can help to uplift their ambition and dedication towards their goal in order to accomplish it.
- Mental health: Strong self-esteem is associated strongly with better results that are outcomes of whatever work you have done such as lower levels of anxiety and depression. It enables one’s ability to maintain a more positive perspective for themselves even in difficult situations and also motivates one to think positively that it is possible to deal with critical situations with the help of a positive mindset and healthy mental health.
Benefits of Self-confidence
Benefits of Slef-Confidence are uncountable but few and most effective in them are:
- Effective conversation: Confidence is something which allows you to communicate and present your opinions and ideas in a clear manner, making it easier to express yourself in different situations.
- Leadership: Confidence is a key which can unlock many opportunities for successful well-being. Confidence is considered as one of the main elements of effective leaders. It helps individuals to motivate and guide other peoples, improve teamwork, and achieve common goals.
- Self-improvement: An individual having a confident mindset encourages him/her for self-development and to pursue knowledge and to learn new skills for personal growth and development.
- Physical Health: Many Researchers have found that individuals with high self-esteem are more likely to be part of healthy lifestyle habits, and engage themselves for the betterment of health such as regular exercise and a balanced diet.
- Advanced learning: Higher self-esteem can enhance attitudes toward learning, making the process of gaining new knowledge in a more enjoyable way and even more effective.
- Reduced Social Anxiety: Many researches have shown that low self-esteem is the main reason for people having social anxiety but one can overcome from the social anxiety by working on their minus points and improving themselves in such a way so that they can feel confident as it is found that People with high self-esteem are less likely to experience social anxiety, leading to enjoyment of social interactions and meaningful interactions.
- Flexibility: A strong self-esteem provides flexibility and makes things easier to cope with life’s changes and uncertainties and navigate them wisely.
- Success in career: Self-confidence and self-esteem is considered as the main element to achieve success. It often predicts good job performance and career achievements, as individuals take opportunities and maintain their performance levels.The inclusion of these additional points further highlights the many benefits of confidence and self-esteem in various areas of life
Q. What is the Difference between High self-esteem and Low self-esteem?
Difference between High self-esteem and Low self-esteem: It has found that People having extremely high self-esteem are often arrogant, self-obsessed, and express feelings of their rights. People having high self-esteem also used to act selfish sometimes like they tend to criticise others flaws and overlook them only on their own. On the other hand, people with Low self-esteem Feel inferior to others and value the opinions of others above their own.
| High self esteem | Low self esteem |
| Always feel overconfident with others | People having low self-esteem feel inferior to others |
| Express their rights/ entitlements confidently in front of others | People having low self-esteem hesitate or feel under confident while expressing or putting their views in front of others |
| Peoples with high self-esteem are often found as arrogant in behaviour | People with low self-esteem are often found with polite and respectful behaviour while Dealing with others |
| Person having high self-esteem also have positive perception where they feel confident about self – worth and abilities | Person having low self-esteem always doubts their ability and self-worth |
Q. What is the difference between self-efficiency and self-confidence?
Difference between self-efficiency and self-confidence:
Self-efficacy and self-confidence both are related concepts, but they have some differences as mentioned below: Self-efficacy can be defined as one’s belief in their ability to successfully complete specific tasks or achieve particular goals. It is something which is task-specific. In other words, someone may have high self-efficacy in one area (e.g., singing a song) but low self-efficacy in another work such as (e.g., social interactions).
On the other hand self-confidence, is a wider and more general belief in oneself, which is not task specific or it doesn’t depend on any situations. Self-efficacy is task specific so it can vary based on the task or context, but on the other hand self-confidence is a stable trait so it doesn’t vary according to the situation. It is often associated with a positive self-image and self-worth.
In conclusion, self-efficacy is more about one’s belief in their ability to perform specific tasks, while self-confidence is a more general belief in oneself. Both are important for personal growth and to achieve success in different aspects of life.
Some additional differences between self-efficacy and self-confidence are listed below in the table:
| Self-efficacy | Self-confidence |
| Self-efficiency can be improved by social modelling and through mastery in specific area as it is not stable | Influenced by various life experiences it is often more stable and also less malleable as compare to the self esteem |
| It influences your motivation and persistence in specific work directly. | Self-confidence contributes to changing your overall approach to life but does not have any direct effect on specific tasks and your motivation as well. |
| Self-efficiency is your ability to accomplish specific tasks as it is context based. | Self-confidence on the other hand is the belief in your overall abilities it is a general sense of assuredness |
Apart from Self- esteem, Self-confidence, and Self- efficacy there are other terms you also prefer to read:
