Tuesday, March 23, 2010

How Does the Need to be Liked Affect your Self-Concept and Self-Esteem?

As I discussed in my last post, the need to be liked has a large biological basis, and can really affect all aspects of our lives. In this post, I am going to briefly talk about how this need affects our self-concept and self-esteem.

Generally speaking, the self-concept can be defined as your overall understanding of who you are as a person. I’m going to hold off on defining self-esteem for now – it is actually going to be a definition that is probably different than the ones you have heard before.

So, we all need to be liked to some degree. Therefore, it is important that we have some idea of how likeable we are to others. Figuring this out can be a very difficult process for many people. Not only that, but this process can lead some people to become depressed.

So, how do we know if we are likeable? Well, in order to answer this question, we need information about ourselves. We often get this information from other people. Specifically, we get feedback from other people to help know more about who we are – and whether we have likeable qualities (e.g., intelligence; attractiveness; sense of humour).

Think about it. I can only know that I am funny if people laugh at my jokes. Knowing if you are smart is greatly influenced by external feedback (ex: tests; other people’s comments). Similarly, people can estimate how attractive they are based on the responses they get from other people (ex: flirting; comments, etc.).

So, generally speaking, we need other people to help us understand ourselves. Easy right? This process of coming to understand yourself by looking for feedback from others can be a really tricky process. There are many complicating factors – here are a few:

(1) other people have their own motivations, and so they can hide their feedback from you (ex: you might find someone very attractive or really smart, and yet not reveal any of these beliefs because you want to avoid embarrassment). Unfortunately for the other person, they never get this really nice feedback.

(2) people can have biased perceptions of other’s behaviour. For example, if you noticed a stranger across a room smiling at you while they talked to their friend, you might assume they like you and are saying positive things. However, you might also interpret that smile as meaning they are mocking you! People who are shy usually make the latter interpretation.

(3) we all have different standards for accepting information. Does a grade of 70% on an exam mean you are smart, average or dumb? If someone rated your attractiveness as 7/ 10, does this mean you are attractive? People hold different standards, and unfortunately for some people, their standards are so high that they ignore feedback that is actually positive.

As a practicing psychologist, there is one phenomenon that I’ve noticed over the years that really affects people’s self-esteem and mood. You could call it an “irrational rejection phobia.” It is an extreme fear of being an unlikeable person, despite the fact that there is plenty of evidence that you are a likeable person. It occurs when a person constantly strives or desires to be above average on a particular trait. For example, I have worked with a number of young women who rate themselves as being a 7/10 in terms of physical attractiveness. If you consider that the average of this scale is 5/ 10, these women are telling me that they consider themselves to be above-average in terms of physical attractiveness. Yet, they are not at all satisfied with this fact – in fact, they are depressed by it! They actually want to be a 9/ 10 or 10/ 10.

Whenever I ask these same women how likeable they are, I usually discover that (a) their likeability rating closely matches their physical attractiveness rating, and (b) they want their likeability rating to be higher, despite being above average. Their thinking and behaviour resembles that of a person with a phobia. People with a fear of spiders want to be as far away from spiders as possible. Unless the spider is deadly (over 99% of the world’s spiders are not deadly), this is considered an irrational fear. When people strive to be as far away as possible from the “unlikeable” side of the 10-point scale (ex: 0-4), it too is an irrational fear.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to avoid rejection, but there certainly reaches a point when it becomes abnormal.

Much research shows that when we are far away from reaching an important ideal or standard, we can feel depressed. For example, if it is really important for you to be thin and you are overweight, you are likely to be feel sad and perhaps depressed. As such, whenever people feel they have to be much better than they are currently (ex: much more attractive; much smarter; a lot funnier), they run the risk of feeling disappointed and sad.

As you can see, figuring out whether you are a likeable person can be a tough process. Yet, it is a very important component of mental health.

So, are you a likeable person? And how does the answer to this question affect your self-esteem? Well, the answer to this question is self-esteem. The traditional definition of self-esteem has typically been “it is the degree to which we like ourselves.” However, some psychologists are now advocating for a new and more accurate definition – Self-esteem reflects the degree to which people believe they are likeable to others.

Or put another way, self-esteem is a person’s estimation of how probable it is that other people will like them and want to be their friend.

This blog post demonstrates how sometimes normal psychological processes have the potential to become dysfunctional. In this case, it is normal to try and evaluate who you are as a person, and how likeable you are. It is also normal to try and avoid rejection and be liked by other people. However, each of these normal processes have the potential to go seriously wrong – and can even lead to mental health problems.

Dr. Roger Covin
Montreal Psychologist
www.drcovin.ca

3 comments:

Allison said...

Great post! Looking forward to reading more.

Rick said...

This is valuable information for me; but of course, I need more and a deeper view to get some benefit. I'm an entertainer and an only child, and I lost my mother to ALS, when I was a teenager. To me, those 3 aspects of my make-up are greatly dependent on others 'liking me'. I do seek attention professionally, because that is the nature of entertainment; but for me, it is also personal acceptance of me, and everything that goes with me. Unfortunately, the entertainment business is exceptionally cruel and full of rejection and insensitive abrupt judgment, as typical. Could you expand on this, as far as self-esteem is concerned? Thank you, for discussing this here. I appreciate it!

Dr. Roger Covin said...

Eric, you are certainly correct that this post does not address the issues with enough depth. This is the reason I write a full-length book entitled "The Need to be Liked" which expands and elaborates on these points.

If you want to learn more, I recommend purchasing the book. I made sure that the paperback and e-book versions were affordable.

You can order either version at Amazon.com (follow this link):

http://www.amazon.com/Need-Liked-Dr-Roger-Covin/dp/0986957801/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1308747279&sr=8-1