"What About Accurate (Not High) Self-Esteem? In our review of the literature, we focused on investigating the benefits of high self-esteem. Given that these benefits are limited at best, it may be appropriate to rethink the basic question. Perhaps it is more valuable and adaptive to understand oneself honestly and accurately, even when this means feeling bad about oneself when that is warranted by unethical, harmful, socially undesirable, or otherwise inappropriate behavior. According to this view, self-esteem could serve valuable and helpful functions (such as for managing one’s life) insofar as it is based on an accurate, rather than inflated, assessment of one’s characteristics. That would mean that accurate self-knowledge would be more useful than high self-esteem."
- Baumeister et al (2003). Benefits of Self-Esteem. 38 VOL. 4, NO. 1, Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
Sourced from : http:/www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/baumeisteretal2003.pdf towards the end of 2006 (I think). Please note how lax I get with formal convention and the way I cite references on my personal pages. I hope such scribbles of mine are sufficient and still fair for my casual purposes. If this is not the case, and anything requires clarifying, please contact me on kay.neich@clear.net.nz ... I'm quite placid, docile and don't bite much.
kayneich/words