Self-Esteem Depends on Who Does Appraisal

Not all self-esteem is created equal.

That’s what two UC Irvine psychologists believe they’ve discovered. In a new study, they found that high self-esteem helps white men in the job market but is not an advantage for blacks and benefits women only slightly.

The research, by David Dooley and Jo Ann Prause, professors in UCI’s Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, looked at self-esteem levels of high school students not planning college, who were tracked as part of a government survey starting in 1980.

Dooley and Prause examined how those young people who exhibited strong feelings of self-worth had fared in the employment market seven years later.

While they expected to find that blacks and women experienced some disadvantages in the economic marketplace, the researchers said that, even after they statistically removed the effects of discrimination, race and gender differences still emerged. “That was the surprising finding,” Dooley said.

One possible explanation, he said, is that blacks and women draw their self-esteem from different sources, such as strong family ties, and express it differently than white men do. That might result in qualities that are not rewarded as much in the job market, he said.

Dooley said the findings were not conclusive, but suggested that further study is warranted. “All of this is a web of speculation,” he said.