Elsevier

Aggression and Violent Behavior

Volume 6, Issue 4, July–August 2001, Pages 375-393
Aggression and Violent Behavior

Feeling good about oneself, being bad to others? Remarks on self-esteem, hostility, and aggressive behavior

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1359-1789(00)00012-4Get rights and content

Abstract

The relation between self-esteem (i.e., a person's global, evaluative view of his/her self), and aggressive behavior is discussed in the light of empirical findings and theoretical formulations presented in the field. There have been different theories connecting aggression to either low or high self-esteem, while neither view has been uniformly supported by clear empirical evidence. A plausible suggestion, also supported by empirical findings, is that it is a certain subset of people who report a high self-esteem who are aggressive. Despite their self-confident surface and, consequently, self-reports of high self-esteem, these people have underlying insecurity regarding their self-view. Empirically, such insecurity is reflected, for example, in the instability of their self-esteem, or by their grandiose, narcissistic, and defensive characteristics. It is suggested that instead of studying self-esteem as unidimensional continuum from “low” to “high,” qualitative distinctions should be made, for instance, between different types of unhealthy self-esteem, such as disparaging and underestimating self versus narcissistically refusing to see anything negative in oneself. It is the latter type, not the former, which seems to be associated with aggressive behavior. Further, it might be clarifying to take into account distinctions that are typical of modern aggression research, such as that between proactive and reactive, or indirect and direct aggression, in research connecting self-esteem and aggression.

Section snippets

Is high or low self-esteem associated with aggressiveness?

Intuitively, it seems quite odd to presume that a person who feels good about him/herself is aggressive toward others — at least the view that his/her feeling good about him/herself causes his/her aggression seems peculiar at first sight. The more so because the early environmental and parental factors known to predict an individual's aggressiveness are such that they can hardly be thought to have fostered the development of a high self-esteem. For example, parents' emotional rejection of the

What is wrong with the self-esteem measures?

Even if the claim “the typical, self-defining statements by both groups and individuals who aggress indicate a belief in their superiority, not inferiority” (Baumeister et al., 1996) is right, one might be tempted to ask, What is behind these “superiority” statements. The traditional self-esteem measures that are based on self-report have been criticized as inadequate. Most studies, however, rely exclusively on these devices. The question of importance is how do we interpret high self-evaluated

Threatened egotism and aggression

Baumeister (1997) and Baumeister et al. (1996) have proposed that aggression is associated with a high self-esteem. Many of their arguments in favor of this view are based on “indirect” evidence rather than on direct empirical comparison of aggressive and non-aggressive groups. According to Baumeister (1997), there are groups that are known to have a higher self-esteem and are also known to be more aggressive than some other groups (e.g., men as compared with women, non-depressed individuals as

What type of aggression are we talking about

In the field of aggression research, several distinctions have been made between different types of aggressive behavior. Some of these distinctions have to do with the conditions surrounding the aggressive act, such as its antecedents, or the motivation of the perpetrator. For example, aggression has been classified into hostile versus instrumental (Hartup, 1974), or reactive versus proactive Dodge & Coie, 1987, Dodge, 1991 aggression. The idea is that in instrumental, or proactive aggression,

Conclusions

The question of the relation between aggression and self-esteem is theoretically important, but as has been shown, it is also empirically controversial. In order to make progress in examining this issue, it seems that distinctions and clarifications have to be made within the concept of self-esteem itself. Further, methods used to measure self-esteem need to be developed, guided by these conceptual clarifications. As Johnson (1997) has pointed out, we should have a clear, theoretically grounded

Acknowledgements

I thank Professor Kirsti Lagerspetz, Ari Kaukiainen, MA, and Laura Pakaslahti, PhD, for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and Jacqueline Välimäki, MA, for revision of the English.

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