posted
Ok, to be honest, that title was much nicer than what I was thinking, which was pretty much "Does OSC do any research for his columns?"
I was extremely disappointed by how uniformed his recent medical system essay was, but when I caught the current Self-Esteem one, this question popped up throughout. He just doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. The lead author on the article he cites (and distorts the whole meaning of), Roy Baumeister has been writing about the problems with self-esteem for around 20 years now. Martin Seligman's book, Learned Optimism, which was built off of all the work Martin did during the 80s challenging and showing the myriad bad effects of the BS pop-self-esteem concept of just not feeling bad, was published in 1991. Julie Norem has been studying successful people who are low in self-esteem for nearly as long. If he came to Hatrack and did even a cursory search on this, he would have come across the many times I've talked about these things, let alone how prominent they are in pretty much any place self-esteem is responsibly discussed. And yet he's trying to lay these things out like they're new.
And man, the assertion that he's never seen a study that shows positive benefits of self-esteem? I don't doubt that this is true, but I think that may be a product of OSC talking about something he's barely looked at, rather than some deficiency in the literature. There are tons of valid studies showing correlations between self-esteem and a whole host of things.
Self-esteem and the problems with are central elements to our culture. They deserve much more than the brief consideration and attempt to fit to a preconceived agenda that OSC seemed to me to treat them with.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
He doesn't do terribly much, as you've noted some specific instances of. Others have included calling the people who live in Iran Arabs and many thigns which might also be just rhetorical swagger, such as his tendency to excessively generalize over extremely large groups of people.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Really Jay? What are you basing that on, say in this case of describing the self-esteem literature?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
It's all part of the glorious new tradition, inspired by Fox News, of claiming opinion as fact, and fact as opinion, depending on what best suits your bizarro argument.
If you want to call Iranians Arabs, that's your prerogative. If you want to say that the war in Iraq has been a stunning success, then by golly, it was!
The world is whatever you want it to be! Literally!
Posts: 1681 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Others have included calling the people who live in Iran Arabs and many thigns which might also be just rhetorical swagger, such as his tendency to excessively generalize over extremely large groups of people.
I'm not sure what slip of the key you're quoting, but if there is anything Card definitely knows, it's the difference between an Arab and a Persian.
Card approaches his research as an avid reader, not as a scientist. In other words, rather than choosing a subject and reading everything available on that subject, he simply chooses books that intrigue him, and reads those. He is extremely well-read on a broad range of topics, and knows something about everything, but as you point out, if you choose any single topic, more than likely, he has only read a few books on that topic.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
"Next on the O'Reilly Factor: How much is too much money? Our 'Limousine Liberal' guest, fugu13, who grosses more than $15,000 each year, folks, will be on to discuss his latest effort to convince little kids to become homosexuals in exchange for lots and lots of money. Truly shocking, folks, so be sure to tune in."
Posts: 1681 | Registered: Jun 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:The Iranians are mad at the US for being our usual decadent selves and for past "wrongs" that we committed against them. Namely, that we supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. They hate Israel because, well they do not need a reason, they are Arabs, thus, they are born hating Israel. Can you imagine how cool the leader of Iran would be to the rest of the Arab world if he nuked Israel?
quote:It's all part of the glorious new tradition, inspired by Fox News, of claiming opinion as fact, and fact as opinion, depending on what best suits your bizarro argument.
Please. This is certainly neither new nor unique to Fox.
posted
I'll miss good ol' Billy boy... we just got satellite TV, and Fox News doesn't happen to be one of the channels that comes with our base package.
posted
I've got a much better plan, I'll get businesses to give me large sums of money because I help them "leverage their pervasive market activities through the general application of public-governmental compacts". . . . . . . . . . . edit: that is, not get fined because they obey the law.
Yes, that is clearly a slip of the key. Trust me, he knows the difference. And his point (whether you agree with it or not) is still pretty clear. Iranians are, by and large, middle eastern Muslims, which means they do, in fact, receive a lot of negative press about Israel.
As much as I don't usually get along with Jay's posts, I've got to say, this whole exchange with Jay saying, "You just disagree with his opinions," and other people saying, "You mean you think OSC is RIGHT that Iranians are Arabs?!" is making you guys look a bit silly. The idea of them being or not-being Arabs has almost nothing to do with the opinion OSC was actually trying to express, the mistake is an easy one to make if it's not a critical issue to your point, and the only reason you guys are so up in arms about it, rather than rolling your eyes and dismissing it as a silly mistake is because you're upset about his opinions.
If you disagree with him (as I often do) then disagree with him as loudly as you want. But this particular nit is a waste of time to pick.
[ February 03, 2005, 11:57 AM: Message edited by: A Rat Named Dog ]
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Is one only entitled to Opinions if one has a PhD in the subject?
I mean we all have opinions. Some more well edcuated and formed and some less well researched. OSC is a writer, in the sense of the column that is all it is, he's telling you *his* opinions.
While some are less researched than others, he's got every right to tell you what he thinks. You may fervently disagree with his opinion, and that is certianly a right. And it is one's duty to become discriminating in what one believes.
However "bad" we may judge them to be at Hatrack. His columns are certianly more well-researched, than 90% of the tripe I find in opinion peices the Chicago Sun Times or Tribune. Those journalism types are rarely as educated on the subject as OSC is.
posted
Without jumping into the bigger hornet's nest of this thread, I will say that it's kind of like my experience of enjoying The Frugal Gourmet on TV, because of the neat stories and background information Jeff Smith would provide--histories of this or that dish or ingredient--but being stunned when he actually talked about something that I actually knew about. When he talked about Cuban food, I realized that he really didn't have all his facts right, just a shallow outsider's perspective. Does this make his show bad? No. He still knows more about a wider variety of foods than I do. More breadth and less depth. So it doesn't shock me, when OSC posts about something I am knowledgeable about, when he gets things somewhat wrong. He's not an expert on education or on a lot of other things. But I still read his columns, because I still find them thought provoking.
I would guess that he puts a comparable amount of effort into his columns to what I put into all of my Hatrack posts combined in a week. I see the column as his hobby as much as anything else.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I often disagree with the essays posted by Card. He tends to over-generalize and quote unsubstantiated claims by authors, with no attempt to determine if their claims are actually true.
Posts: 1480 | Registered: Dec 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I say that since most of the attacks against Scott are based on his conservative views on most issues. He’s sort of a “Zell Miller” Democrat who has been left behind by his party. Big deal if Iranians are not Arabs but Persians. Muslim, Islamic, and Arabic are used pretty much used interchangeably. Why is this the big deal? I would say it’s a big deal because it’s easier to argue about this point then it is to argue about the true point of the discussion. Sort of a smoke screen.
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Geoff, I'm pretty sure that any reputable source about the self-esteem movement in education would have to at least mention Martin Seligman at the very least. I don't have the Baumeister article handy, but if it included a reference section, I'm positive that it would reference both Seligman's and Baumeister's long study in this area.
And when you make claims about "every study I've read" there's an implicit claim that you've actually read a substantial amount. Unless you were very selective, I don't think you could get past three articles, even one's centered around the problems with self-esteem, without seeing references to correlations between self-esteem and beneficial things.
Admittedly, I'm an expert in the self-esteem literature, but I really don't think that anyone with a responsible, if much shallower, understanding of the literature could miss the errors in this column. If OSC's reseach is oriented around learning enough about something to be able to talk accurately and authoritatively about it, in this case, he failed miserably. And considering how prominent the stuff is he missed, I don't think he could have put much effort at all into it.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote: One does not question such a "nice" idea as praising children.
Until, finally, somebody does. Roy F. Baumeister, Jennifer D. Campbell, Joachim I. Krueger and Kathleen D. Vohs published an article in the January 2005 Scientific American titled "Exploding the Self-Esteem Myth."
Their method was not so much research as a review of research.
They went through all the published research on self-esteem and immediately eliminated all the studies that depended on self-reporting along.
Here's Squick's complaint about it:
quote:And yet he's trying to lay these things out like they're new.
Squick's obviously focusing on the word "Finally."
When I read it I focused on "They went through all the published research," which was enough to tell me that the findings weren't new, and OSC knew they weren't new.
Taken in context with his admission of never seing a sound scientific study that revealed the importance of self-esteem, it seems to me as if OSC is focusing not on the existence of the research itself, but on the popular presentation and perception of that research.
Card recognizes the limits of his knowledge, but he's trying to fill in the gaps on so many different subjects, that someone who devotes their study to a single subject will outstrip his base of research rather quickly.
As said above, this does not mean that Orson Scott Card has no right to express his opinion. Honestly, I think one of his greatest anxieties is about the fact that there are people reading his columns who know more than he does about certain subjects, and might try to draw the conclusion that he is an idiot just because he missed some bit of research that they thought was "critical".
He's doing a far better job of actually reading up on things than most opinionated columnists do, and and certainly far, FAR more than they average American. So cut him some slack if he gets to one of the few subjects that you are an expert in, and (shock!) doesn't know as much about it as you. That will happen to you again and again, when you're an expert. There's nothing special about it here.
If you want to write Card a respectful e-mail and inform him of further reading he might want to do, he'll take it very well, and may follow your advice, and even change his opinion — I've seen a lot of correspondence in which he does exactly that. But if all you're interested in is publically talking about how much bigger your "expertise" is than Card's, well ... have at it, I guess. It just won't have much of a serious impact on the world.
[ February 03, 2005, 12:16 PM: Message edited by: A Rat Named Dog ]
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Here's a doozy I put down to rhetorical swagger:
quote:Maybe a war crime took place. But it is extremely doubtful. Shooting the enemy only becomes a war crime when the enemy has surrendered and the surrender has been accepted.
If the reporter had known a little history (or cared), he might have remembered the way that German soldiers in the last weeks of World War II, when it was obvious their side was losing, would still keep killing Americans until they ran out of ammunition. Then they would stand up and put up their hands in surrender.
Nobody -- and I mean nobody -- considers it a war crime that some Gis, having just lost a buddy or two to this very German soldier and his meaningless resistance, chose not to accept his surrender. Nobody held war crimes trials. It was regrettable, but it was war.
To quote the Geneva Conventions:
quote:Article 41.-Safeguard of an enemy hors de combat 1. A person who is recognized or who, in the circumstances, should be recognized to be hors de combat shall not be made the object of attack.
2. A person is hors de combat if:
(a) He is in the power of an adverse Party;
(b) He clearly expresses an intention to surrender; or
(c) He has been rendered unconscious or is otherwise incapacitated by wounds or sickness, and therefore is incapable of defending himself; provided that in any of these cases he abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape.
3. When persons entitled to protection as prisons of war have fallen into the power of an adverse Party under unusual conditions of combat which prevent their evacuation as provided for in Part m, Section I, of the Third Convention, they shall be released and all feasible precautions shall be taken to ensure their safety.
There is no requirement that surrender be accepted. And I can quite simply refute the "nobody -- and I mean nobody" part. I consider it a war crime. A regrettable and understandable war crime, which perhaps should not be prosecuted, but should definitely be understood as a war crime. Teaching people it is okay to shoot surrendering people under any circumstances is a horrific thought, and we should call all such instances what they are. We would call an American who spent his last breath shooting Germans in that war, even when in a hopeless situation, an hero, and would be outraged if Germans shot him when he tried to surrender. We must strive our utmost to hold ourselves to the highest standards of conduct because, as I have stated before, without the polite fiction that war is civilized, we risk all that has been built on that fiction.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Banna, I'm not trying to say that you need to have amazing credentials anytime you want to express you opinion. I was disappointed by OSC's medical column because I've gotten deeper and better information from in a five minute conversation with a friend of mine who's a doctor active in the issues OSC was talking about, but I certainly wasn't going to make that the basis for a complaint. However, in this case, he's just wrong, and seems to be wrong because he's talking about something he doesn't really know anything about.
People in our culture have a (to me) remarkable facility for making authoritative statements about things they know nothing about. We suffer from a tremendous lack of intellectual integrity. As I've said, I'm intimately acquainted with the problems with self-esteem literature, so I get it, but it does still annoy and dishearten me a great deal.
I'm not saying don't have an opinion; I'm saying recognize that the your conecption of your opinion should be take into account how much or little you know about what it's about and have a sense of shame about talking authoritatively about things you don't really know much about.
Along with this, realize that most things are more complex than your conception of them and that there is much more you generally need to learn about things. If OSC wanted to actually know about self-esteem, I could recommend some great sources, starting with the Seligman book I mentioned before.
posted
Geoff, As I said, my issue isn't that I know more about it than he does, it's that he's claiming things that are transparently wrong to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the field.
And yes, that most other columnists and the American public in general do a worse job is also part of my point. I'm not satisfied with comparative justification, because (besides being one of the big problems with self-esteem) it at least in part is responsible for the acceptance of people talking from positions of ignorance. I don't think it's a bad thing to hold the principle that people should match the confidence that they talk about something with the amount they know about it even in face of such objections as "well, other people are even worse".
Intellectual integrity is a rare thing, no doubt, but it's nonetheless a principle worth celebrating.
And yes, psychology is one of the big areas where people (from what I've seen, your dad included) feel amazing confident in talking from positions of extreme ignorance. It's a very wide and important field that even many undergrad Psych majors know very little about, but everyone considers themself pretty much an expert on.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Squick, (and here I go making an authoritative statment about something I know nothing about) I don't think it is a fault particularly ingrained in our culture over any other. I think it is human nature and in all cultures, though it may manifest itself in varying degrees. The US culture could very well have the worst tendencies of any current country, but I doubt it.
Also, while I vehemently disagree with lots of other things OSC says, his opinions on this subject actually coincided with many of my own individual opinions. Now I admit, I haven't researched the field at all. But, even if he is factually wrong, he isn't saying things that other ordinary people find outrageous.
/insert snarkiness Maybe it's the fault of your field having a public relations problem that no one knows the "facts" any better, hmm?
And from an outsiders perspective sociology if it was correct, should have the *least* public relations problem of any discipline, if they applied all the research they've done to their own field. And if they can't apply it to their own field, why should I validate it, when they can't take the log out of their own eye before taking the twig out of mine?
posted
Banna, The U.S. isn't the worst at this, but it's pretty bad. Human nature is a lot more dynamic than people seem to think. Both self-esteem and indivualism correlate pretty well with this behavior (but they also correlate well with each other). It's not certain, but looking at it with especially a cross-cultural eye (for a start on this, I'd recommend Richard Nesbitt's excellent The Geography of Thought) I think it's reasonable to suggest that calling this an immutable part of human nature may be overextending your own cultural context.
Other cultures with very different cultures don't have this problem to anywhere near where the U.S. does. People in our culture who share certain characteristics also don't exhibit this problem anywhere near as much as the general population. There are reasons for these differences that can't (or at least shouldn't) be dismissed by a wave of the magic "human nature" wand.
edit: No doubt, psychologist have done a bad job of PR-ing itself. I'm certainly not going to try to defend a field that I have some major historical and current problems with.
However, there are also plenty of reasons for this other than their failure. Besides the ethical and technical issues that attach here (and there are many), there's the central issue that one of the major messages of a "let's know more psychology" campaign would have to be "You actually know very little about human nature." which as you can no doubt imagine is strongly resisted.
posted
Squick, don't try to tell OSC anything about intellectual integrity, all right? Intellectual integrity has nothing to do with how much you've read on a subject, but rather, what standard you use to judge your own opinions. From long experience with Card, I know he has some extreme and sometimes unpopular opinions, but he doesn't just make them up. He reads as much as he can, and judges skeptically and intelligently between the positions he discovers.
No matter how much he reads, though, somewhere there will be an expert who has read more, who has come to a different conclusion, and who thinks that his difference with Card illustrates a severe deficiency in Card's knowledge. In fact, I'm betting there are at least a dozen people in the world who would form the same opinion of you.
Regardless, though, this says nothing about Card's "intellectual integrity". Someone with intellectual integrity will likely hold many conflicting opinions over the course of his life, and without question, many of those he will later consider to be wrong and ill-informed.
That doesn't mean no one should ever express an opinion until they are finished studying the subject. Are you finished studying psychology? Are you sure your opinion right now is completely and perfectly informed, and will never change? If so, then it is you that lacks intellectual integrity, not Card.
But I doubt that's your position. So give Card some slack and some respect. If you think he has missed something, then I'm sure he would be grateful to find out about it, and will consider himself better off for having learned a little more.
But your judgment of his character is, in my opinion, entirely too harsh and unwarranted.
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Now, looking back, I see that you didn't actually directly accuse Card of lacking intellectual integrity It was just the impression I got from the way your post was phrased. So if that's not what you meant, forgive me for jumping on it ...
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I always value OSC’s opinion. I always find it well thought out and most of the time very logical. He explains his beliefs very well and always gives reason. It’s great to see how he also puts this into his characters.
[ February 03, 2005, 02:22 PM: Message edited by: Jay ]
Posts: 2845 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote: I think it's reasonable to suggest that calling this an immutable part of human nature may be overextending your own cultural context.
I acknowledge my own cultural bias, but when you look at the historical documentation for the causes of falls of major empires over the course of history, I'd say that it is pretty endemic to human nature. Most of them were holding the opinions they wanted to hold because they wanted to hold them. "Rome is invincible" for example, right up until the time the Vandals were knocking on the gates...
posted
Banna, And I would counter with saying that Rome had a cultural makeup similar to ours in regards to the things that influence this.
I'm not disagreeing with there being a human nature. What I'm saying is that it is both a great deal more dynamic and more complex than many people give it credit for.
One of the ways I think I can best express this is in the difference between a homeostatic system and polar one. It's a simplified case, but I've found it gets the point across.
A homeostatic system has a set of conditions that it tries to maintain against outside variances. The classic example is a thermostat. When it gets too cold, the thermostat senses this and turns on the furnace. When it heats up enough or too much, it turns off the furnace and maybe turns on the AC. The whole point is that there is one set point (or mutliple set points in a more complex system) that the system is wholely directed towards maintaining.
You can account for some pretty complex behavior using such a system if you grant multiple set points. The human body is good example of a highly complex, largely homeostatic system. In motivation, Abraham Maslow's hierarch of needs is largely a homeostatic system (although it's compicated a bit by some of the needs be satiatable deficiency needs and some being insatiatable "being" needs).
The homeostatic model is the one that people are generally applying, either knowlingly or unknwolingly, when they talk about "human nature". In this way of thinking there is some specific point or, in it's hydralic form, drive that people are claiming is just a part of immutable "human nature".
I think that in some cases the homeostatic model makes sense, but that it fails badly in accounting for the flexibilty and generability of human actions. I think that polar systems and one's similar to them account for these things better.
A polar system is one where multiple, opposing things are driving behavior. This isn't actually necessarily inconsistent with homeostasis, as you can have approach-approach conflicts where there are two homeostatic goals pulling in opposite directs, like a child torn between the cookies at one end of the room and the cake at the other, avoidence-avoidence, which is pretty much the opposite, and approach-avoidence, which is what some say comes into play when a child wants a cookie but is afraid of getting punished for eating it.
The thing is, while those systems are at least quais-polar, they are still largely static. What I'm talking about are more dynamic systems.
For example, the motivational modeal that I'm working with is one that propses to treat "human nature" as being made up of the two primal motivations, one towards safety and the other towards challenge. In this conception, safety only kicks in when there is the perception of a threat while challenge is constantly active and inexhaustible. However, since enaging in challenge is both threat-inducing and resource-consuming, it is necessarily limited by safety-motivations.
This type of system yields the potential for much more flexible and dynamic (I keep using those words) behavior.
In the case of Americans (and our culture forebearers), our mytholgies and philosophies strongly emphasize safety as the primary goal of life. The paradise we envision is nicely summed up in the examplar Garden of Eden myth. It's a static place where all our needs are met and we exist pretty much without consciousness. This is reflected in America's #1 preferred leisure activity, watching television.
Not only do we exmphasize safety (as really any expansive society seems to) but we also center around the individual. Thus, the idea of your individual self as both powerful and stable is central to the American identity. This conception is intimately intertwined with the idea of self-esteem. Other cultures, such as the Japanese, who have a much more stable, predictable, and homogenous environment as well as stronger social bonds and competencies and a conception of the individual as highly contextual look down on the idea of self-esteem.
As a safety oriented, individualistic society grows and becomes powerful, it often tends to focus it's efforts on achieving comfort, which further limits both challenge and, what's more important here, reality testing. Where before they were forced to acknowledge their own limitations, the citizens of an affluent culture become isolated from the consequences of their beliefs and actions. Also, they come to neglect their challenge mtoivations and cease exercising things that they used to be forced by circumstances to use, which leads to some pretty crappy psychic imbalances. A contemporary American is 10x more likely to experience a depressive episode than one born around the 20s. This is also demonstrated by the tendency of people who talk blithely about "human nature" to know bugger all about any sort of systematic study of humans.
People who show a greater tendency to engage in challenging activities or those who are through position or temperment more disposed towards reality testing demonstrate much less of this behavior than the average American. Likewise, citiznes of Japan likewise demonstrate it much less than their American counterparts.
There are reasons for why people act in different ways and these reasons can be extremely important. I don't think that it's responsible to dismiss this area by either attributing it all to this unstudied "human nature" or by gleaning (incorrectly) a few tidbits of information and presuming that you have gotten sufficient information. Nor do I feel that it's reponsible to (as empirically I've so many people) engage in the analog of the person who's listened to 1% of rap claiming that they hate 99% of it.
posted
Geoff, Most, perhaps all, of the people whose intellectual integrity in high regard freely admit that they think that pretty much everything they believe is wrong. Being wrong or changing one's opinions or even being underinformed has very little to do with intellectual integrity, which centers around the concept of holding and expressing opinions at a level commensurate with how much you actually know about them. Closely related to this is how much you can trust someone when they tell you something, especially when they implicitly or explicitly claim authority in it.
In this case, OSC's confidence in his opinions seems to me to far outstrip his knowledge and he demonstrates that you can't trust him to know even the basics of something before he will talk about it in an authoritative context. So yeah, I was impugning his intellectual integrity and I was saying that you can't trust that even the basics of what he claims are true are actually true. He's still entitled to his opinion, but I'm entitled to say that, at least in this case, it's an ill-informed and irresponsible one.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
As someone who prides himself on his intellectual integrity, I can freely admit that I don't know enough to judge between the two of you on the matter
Perhaps Card's opinion clearly represents a fundamental deficiency that is worth your indignation.
Perhaps Card has taken into account everything you think is missing, and simply arrived at a different opinion many more steps down the road.
Perhaps you're missing the fact that he does not portray himself as a scientist or an expert, and instead takes great pride in being an "ordinary American" rather than a member of any kind of elite. In fact, if you were to point out a single defining trait of Card's position on everything, "anti-elitist" would probably about cover it From that position, he does not attempt to appeal to any claim of experthood or scientific authority, and your accusations are beside the point.
I am curious if you think that the creators of Card's major source (that review of past research on self-esteem) show a similar deficiency to the one you see in Card.
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think of OSC's columns as blog entries. They are generally informative, usually entertaining, and always well written. OSC is not a journalist nor does he claim to be. I think we are just imputing a higher standard of excellence on him because we love his work so much. It is a compliment and an unfair burden. He is just a man who writes well who has opinions. That is all.
Posts: 1592 | Registered: May 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
So I finally got around to reading the Scientific American article (you can find it here. Here's the conclusion section of the article:
quote:First, causation needs to be established. It seems possible that high self-esteem brings about happiness, but no research has shown this outcome. The strong correlation between self-esteem and happiness is just that--a correlation. It is plausible that occupational, academic or interpersonal successes cause both happiness and high self-esteem and that corresponding failures cause both unhappiness and low self-esteem. It is even possible that happiness, in the sense of a temperament or disposition to feel good, induces high self-esteem.
Second, it must be recognized that happiness (and its opposite, depression) has been studied mainly by means of self-report, and the tendency of some people toward negativity may produce both their low opinions of themselves and unfavorable evaluations of other aspects of life. In other instances, we were suspicious of self-reports, yet here it is not clear what could replace such assessments. An investigator would indeed be hard-pressed to demonstrate convincingly that a person was less (or more) happy than he or she supposed. Clearly, objective measures of happiness and depression are going to be difficult if not impossible to obtain, but that does not mean self-reports should be accepted uncritically.
What then should we do? Should parents, teachers and therapists seek to boost self-esteem wherever possible? In the course of our literature review, we found some indications that self-esteem is a helpful attribute. It improves persistence in the face of failure. And individuals with high self-esteem sometimes perform better in groups than do those with low self-esteem. Also, a poor self-image is a risk factor for certain eating disorders, especially bulimia--a connection one of us (Vohs) and her colleagues documented in 1999. Other effects are harder to demonstrate with objective evidence, although we are inclined to accept the subjective evidence that self-esteem goes hand in hand with happiness.
So we can certainly understand how an injection of self-esteem might be valuable to the individual. But imagine if a heightened sense of self-worth prompted some people to demand preferential treatment or to exploit their fellows. Such tendencies would entail considerable social costs. And we have found little to indicate that indiscriminately promoting self-esteem in today's children or adults, just for being themselves, offers society any compensatory benefits beyond the seductive pleasure it brings to those engaged in the exercise.
Here's a bit from OSC's column:
quote: They claim to have science on their side, though whenever I was able to find out what was actually going on in a study that supposedly showed the benefits of self-esteem, it seemed obvious to me that the "science" wasn't science at all.
Even the article he's using as a source (and which he commends for it's serious science) talks about benefits of self-esteem.
I thought about it and I've come up with my major complaint. The self-deluding, anti-reality testing self-esteem that OSC is decrying runs both through his colum nad this discussion.
OSC appears to know next to nothing about the field. He's read a short article in Scientific American. That's great, but it's hardly adequate to discuss the issue knowledgibly, especially since, in light of his claim of not seeing any valid instances of the benefits of self-esteem, he didn't get a good understanding of the whole article.
I'm not saying that he doesn't have a right to an opinion. The people who go on American Idol have a right to sing, too. That doesn't mean that either of these performances can't be judged on quality.
The fact is, no matter how much esteem OSC has in his intelligence or his knowledge of the issue of self-esteem, the quality he demonstrated is very poor. He doesn't know the basic facts and even contradicts his only provided source. And yet I shouldn't criticize him, shouldn't point out how poor a job he's done, why? Because it's not nice? Because it might hurt his feelings? Because, despite his obvious ignorance, what's he's saying "sounds right" to other people who know almost nothing about it? That's the same crap self-esteem that he was saying was bad.
Self-esteem in our culture is a very complicated issue. It's not, as OSC claims, a matter of simple common sense. You don't read one issue in a non-technical publication, impose your own conceptions on it, and become an instant expert. It's not a simple matter. Consider the description:
quote: Whom would you rather hire to work for you? The person who thinks he's wonderful all the time, regardless of what he does, or the person who is always questioning the quality of his own work and trying to do better?
Whom would you rather be married to? The person who is absolutely convinced of his or her attractiveness, or the person whose word is reliable and who is devoted to achieving the same goals as you?
Does anyone else see the enormous wholes in the false dichotomy he's set up?
We've got stable versus unstable self-esteem, mastery versus self-conception versus positive/negative emoptions, external versus internal, defensive pessimissism, the stability that gives ou the confidence to explore versus the drive towards keeping the self the same which thwarts exploration, narcissism, self-esteem that comes from favorable external comparisons, self-esteem that comes from self-acceptance, the need for confidence in action and for doubt in contemplation, biomedical depression versus cognitive/behavioral depression, self-delusion, and a whole host of other considerations. We've got cross-cultural studies that have led us to understand that what seems so natural and "common sense" to us don't appear that way to other healthy cultures. Heck, lat year, Crocker and Park made some interesting points that in some cases it's not so much the level of self-esteem someone has as the way they react to challenges to their self-concept. My own work has involved, among so many other things, going beyond the statistical effects of regression to the mean and showing how depression is not necessarily a bad thing. Doesn't make "common" sense does it? Another regression to the mean problem is that oftentimes the people who self-report the highest self-esteem have problems that are much less severe in people who report more moderate levels, so a simple polar comparison misses what's going on.
These ideas are the product of a ton of rigorous work by a bunch of very smart people. They inform my concept of what self-esteem is, how it works, and what the problems are with it. I know them because I myself, despite OSC's claim that for self-esteem researchers, "the standards of scientific rigor were very, very low", put an enormous value on intellectual integrity, just like I was trained to do.
I obviously know orders of magnitude more about the self-esteem literature than OSC. This doesn't necessrily mean I know much more about the reality of it, but I'd be willing to bet pretty good money that this is the case. My opinions on self-esteem are most likely of much higher quality that his are, especially considering the low quality of the ones he has expressed. This has nothing to do with if I'm smarter than he is (one of the things you get from a superb education like I've gotten is how very little intelligence means after a certain point) or whether I'm a better person. It's a matter of me having an informed, considered opinion and he not. It does however mean that I feel comfortable viewing him like he views the very poor singers who are convinced that they are the next American Idol.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
There's diffrent type of anti-elitism. There's the type exemplified by Thomas Paine in Common Sense that there is no part of someone's station or position that gives them an intrinsic claim to quality. To Paine, nobility or breeding or authority as it was then understood in no way made a person more right than someone without these things and in many cases tended to make them more wrong.
Then there's the other type, which is more like "How dare you talk about this Thomas Paine! I don't know who that is. My opinion is good enough." This attitude denies quality even exists and backs it up with being offended by those people who think that it does.
I've got plenty of sympathy for the first type where quality is available to all. The second type, on the other hand, is pure crap self-esteem nonsense.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Squick, quote the paragraph before the one you included in that last big post:
quote: But the self-esteem movement has gone way beyond that. Claiming to have science on their side, the self-esteemers have insisted that children should receive lavish doses of praise regardless of their performance.
They claim to have science on their side, though whenever I was able to find out what was actually going on in a study that supposedly showed the benefits of self-esteem, it seemed obvious to me that the "science" wasn't science at all.
If "self-esteem" as used in the second paragraph is read as "that which is being advocated by the 'self-esteemers,' it's not at all clear that your criticism of this particular passage is valid. That's how I read it the first time I read the article, and I've seen nothing to persuade me that this is an incorrect reading.
Here's why I think there's a negative reaction to this thread. You haven't said, "Here's OSC's thesis. His thesis is wrong. The truth is X. Here's my evidence." You started rudely, used a clever little rhetorical device to get your even ruder thought in without actually "being" rude.
You also started with the main objection that Card thinks these findings are new, yet ignore Card's acknowledgment that the article he's referring to is review of research that's already been conducted.
In short, you're attacking a caricature of the essay, not the actual essay yourself. It's particularly grievous because it's unnecessary in this case. Sure, I don't doubt you'd win a debate with OSC on this topic, or that you're more knowledgeable. I can see scattered throughout your posts here criticisms that are actually aimed at the article itself, and not out-of-context pieces of it. I'm sure you could come up with an essay that pokes significant holes in OSC's total thesis.
But you didn't do that. It comes across as vendetta and meanness, not intellectual challenge.
posted
Dag, I think you may be missing the thrust of what I'm saying. As far as OSC's main thesis is that these people who push the idea that children should always be given indiscriminate praise and kept from ever thinking that they failed are very wrong, I totally agree with him.
What I'm taking exception to are (among other things) he description of this idea going largely unchecked until now and his implicit assertion that there are few scientifically valid stdies that show benefits of self-esteem. At the root of this, I think, is that OSC thinks that self-esteem only means what those people are saying it does.
As I said, the crap self-esteem that they were pushing was, contrary to OSC's assertion that accepted uncritically by a field of people who have little concern for scientific rigor, opposed pretty much from day one by some pretty prominent people. To just take one, Martin Seligman was president of the APA and one of the main people responsible with breaking the radical Behaviorists. His book, Learned Optimism, was published in 1991 and was built off of the research he did in the 80s, much of it concerning the effects of crap self-esteem on children. It was also a best seller, as was his targeted follow up book, The Optimistic Child. Not suprisingly, while he definitely strongly opposed the crap self-esteem that many people were spouting, he incorporated a more mastery-based self-esteem into his conception of child development. As part of this, he went on to found the Penn Resiliency Project, an enterprise dedicated towards increasing children's mental health and overall performance by applying Martin's ideas, which includes self-esteem. It's been pretty successful. A very good friend of mine, who worked for the prjoect as an undergrad, wrote her PhD dissertation on her attempts to apply a somewhat modified system to the specific situation of poor, urban, minority populations. Her results are encouraging as well.
As I said in my initial post, self-esteem is a very complex issue. It's not this simple, empty-headed concept that is only accepted because the people who study it are irresponsible ideolouges who think it sounds nice. The solution to the problems of self-esteem isn't having people just use some common sense. The idea of "we don't need to understand the complexity, we just need to have some common sense." is pretty much what drove the crap self-esteem people in the first place. "Common sense" means pretty much whatever sounds right to the people using it and has historically been pretty bad in terms of accuracy. That's why we use systematic and scientific study. That's also why we expect people who talk about things to know what they're talking about.
I'm stongly opposed to "common sense" prejudicial thinking and the idea that all opinions are equally valid, no matter the differences in knowledge of the people holding them. As I said, I extremely against the idea of not calling people on things they do wrong because it would hurt their self-esteem. I detest the current climate that condones unsubstantiated attacks on epistemological validity such as "You can prove anything with statistics." or "You can have an expert on any side of an issue." If I'm vehement here, it's because I think that OSC has provided an egregious example of these things that I think are very bad for our society. For the man himself, I don't doubt he's a very warm, caring person who I'd like if I got to know him personally. I certainly don't bear him any ill-will. But that doesn't mean that I'm not going to call him on things I think he's done wrong.
edit: And maybe this isn't coming across, but I'm much more concerned with those elements and how wide-spread they are in our culture (and on Hatrack) than I am about OSC. He provides an example that is particularly relevant to Hatrack, but he's not even a particulary big offender in the wider context.
posted
I interpreted the article as his attack on a popular movement that often misuses scientific studies. I don't think he asserted that the scientific community studying self-esteem had advocated the methods of that popular movement.
I don't think he was commenting on the scientific community, or asserting that science was supporting the "crazies." I think he was commenting on how everytime a study came out underlining the benefits of self-esteem, these crazies used those benefits to justify their "praise everything" approach. The lack of evidence he decried was not about self-esteem's benefits, but about the idea that "praise anything" can actually create real self-esteem and, consequently, the benefits of self-esteem.
In other words, I think he realizes it is a complex issue, and was attacking people who oversimplify it. In doing so, I think he made a linguistic, not scientific, mistake. That is, he used the words "self-esteem" to refer to the popular, "crazy" movement and to the concept as studied in scientific literature. I think he knows the difference between the two, but was talking about the former most of the time.
I admit, the essay is less than clear on this point, especially in the most-quoted sentence. You may be interpreting him correctly. But i think you're attributing more to him than he's actually saying.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Dont Know]](graemlins/dontknow.gif)
Guess you'll have to ask him....
![[Laugh]](graemlins/laugh.gif)
Zeugma! ![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
That was great.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
It was just the impression I got from the way your post was phrased. So if that's not what you meant, forgive me for jumping on it ...
