The Sociometer Theory: what it is and how it explains self-esteem

Is it useful to work directly on self-esteem? According to the sociometer theory, our self-esteem would be an indicator of how socially accepted or rejected we feel more than a wellness factor in itself.

This idea would go against the one applied in many workshops and books on self-esteem, in which stresses that for a person to increase this psychological aspect he must "learn to love himself herself ”.

However, what good is it going to be that we love each other a lot if our self-esteem seems to depend on our relationship with others? Next, we will take a more in-depth look at this sociometer theory and what influence society has on our psychological well-being.

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What is the Sociometer Theory of Self-Esteem?

The sociometer theory of self-esteem, proposed by Mark Leary, is a theoretical model that states that self-esteem is an indicator of our adequate social relationship rather than a factor that gives us well-being. That is, in this theory self-esteem is conceived not as a cause of our well-being, but rather a consequence of the same, well-being directly related to the degree of acceptance or rejection that we perceive from our environment near.

The theory is really controversial, since it contradicts many of the postulates defended both in popular psychology and in the most academic and scientific, coming to say that self-esteem would not be what should be worked on if it is low, Y According to this, the appropriate thing would be to promote strategies that lead us to feel and be more accepted in the reference group, and in case of achieving it, we would have as a consequence an increase in self-esteem.

Before going deeper and looking at the details of this theory, let's highlight the importance of sociability in our species, an idea that It may seem obvious but, really, having grown up in an individualistic society such as the Western one, it never hurts see it.

We are social beings

One of the most shared and accepted ideas in the Western world is the individuality of each one. Our vision of people is that we are organizations more or less independent from the rest and that, at most, we can receive some influence from others but, in essence, our way of being and acceptance of ourselves depends on U.S. If we put our mind to it, we can become isolated and independent machines, fending for ourselves without interacting with others.

This idea has penetrated deep into various branches of psychology, including behaviorism, cognitive therapy and psychoanalysis. Psychology has taken an optics centered on the individual, on the subject "from the inside out", seen as an autonomous being and not a social animal. Likewise, several currents that have emphasized the relationship of the person with others, such as the school of Systems Theory, applied in family therapy, or psychology Social.

But despite the fact that we, as Westerners, focus excessively on the individual and have reflected it this way In various currents of thought, evolutionary biology proves the opposite: we are human beings social. We come into the world as a group and we cannot develop as individual humans. What's more, our evolutionary ancestors and even the common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees was social. We were already social even before we were human.

This scientific fact has not been taken into account until relatively recently. In fact, a widely shared idea in Western thought, both philosophical and political and scientific, is that at some point in history individuals Humans came together and gave up their individual rights to be able to live in society, something that Jean-Jacques Rousseau himself raises in his "The social contract" of 1762. But the reality is that this never happened, since our species inherited social life from its previous links.

There are several natural experiments that reveal the need for people to live with others to develop as humans, the most renowned being the cases of children wild. On more than one occasion a child has been accidentally or intentionally abandoned to its fate and, miraculously, has survived and grown up without making any contact with other people. Being isolated from the rest of their peers, they lack many of the capacities that we consider properly human, such as language, the idea of ​​"I" or an identity of their own.

Unlike the idea put forward by Rousseau himself about the good savage, children who have grown up without human contact in critical periods of their development do not even know that they are human themselves. From this it follows that it is not possible to understand the human qualities that we understand that define us, such as idea of ​​"I", identity, conscience, language and self-esteem, in isolation from the rest of people. They are human qualities that arise and develop by interacting with others. No one can grow or be a person if he does not relate to other people.

Self-esteem and society

Having understood the above, we can see more fully what the sociometer theory of self-esteem advocates. This theory starts from the social group and conceives the idea of ​​self-esteem in a totally different from the traditional one, taking into account the indisputably social nature of our species. Psychology, in practically all its currents, has defended the role of self-esteem in explaining all kinds psychological phenomena and mental disorders, but few had asked what function it plays in itself, why exists.

As its name suggests, the sociometer theory of self-esteem considers that self-esteem works as a kind of thermostat, a "sociometer". This monitors the degree to which the individual is included or excluded by other people from their social environment, that is, social acceptance. Depending on how accepted you feel, this sociometer system encourages the person to behave in a way that minimizes possibilities of being rejected or excluded from the group, tending to behave in a way considered attractive and pleasant socially.

In its most primitive state, the human being is unable to survive and reproduce without the help of other people. For this reason, from evolutionary psychology, it is argued that psychological systems had to be developed that motivated people to develop and maintain a minimum level of inclusion in social relationships and groups. As much as we say that we do not like to be with others, we seek their support since, without it, we will hardly be able to survive.

To successfully maintain our relationships with others requires a system that monitors the reactions of the others to our behavior, being especially sensitive to those samples that indicate rejection, exclusion or disapproval. This system would alert us to the changes that occur in our inclusion towards the group, especially when there is less social acceptance.

To prevent social acceptance from lowering the system even further would motivate us to engage in behaviors that would repair or restore original acceptance. Self-esteem would be the system that would indicate to us how accepted we are in the group and, the lower we had it, the more it would alert us to social exclusion. This would activate us to avoid losing ties, since if it happened we would lose protection and our chances of survival would be reduced.

Understanding this, the idea would not be to maintain self-esteem in itself. Self-esteem would not stop being an indicator of how accepted we feel. If we take actions that increase social acceptance, such as helping others, being kind, having significant achievements, our self-esteem will increase as a result of feeling more included in the group. On the other hand, if we show socially rejected behaviors, such as violating group morals, having unpleasant traits or failure in our goals, our self-esteem will suffer and sink as a result of having fewer social relationships and worse quality.

Thus, self-esteem, according to this model, is linked to affective and social processes. High self-esteem makes us feel good, while low self-esteem causes us discomfort. Our nature tends to consider those things that it wants us to repeat as pleasant, while those that it wants us to avoid causes us to experience them with pain and discomfort. Any threat to our body, both physical, psychological and emotional, is associated with an aversive feeling, which motivates us to act to solve the situation.

For example, if our body is dehydrating we will feel thirsty, which is an unpleasant sensation. To stop feeling it, what we will do is drink a glass of water and, thus, we will be able to quench our thirst. The same would happen with self-esteem: negative emotions would be the aversive feeling, a product of disapproval or rejection perceived in our environment. This situation would be perceived as a danger to our survival and would motivate us to solve the problem, doing more socially valued behaviors.

In short, and according to the research carried out by Leary's group and other researchers, the main function of self-esteem would be to indicate to us when we are at risk of being excluded, motivating us to move to avoid such exclusion. Human beings are activated to avoid the unpleasant sensation of rejection rather than to feel the pleasant approval, although we still also invested resources to achieve this second objective.

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Its repercussions

The sociometer theory of self-esteem can have practical implications, despite being understood as a very theoretical model. In fact, comes to contradict the main idea held by many books on the psychology of self-esteem, self-help and other similar publications: "love yourself".

If it is true that self-esteem is an indicator of our social relationships and the degree to which we are accepted or rejected by our environment, then it is not a cause of psychological well-being but rather a consequence of same. If so, the books, workshops and classes to work on self-esteem, although mostly well-intentioned, they would not have any effect since they would not be changing a factor in itself, but more well an indicator. We would be "tricking" what warns us of our social acceptance.

So that we understand. Let's imagine that we are driving and the needle that indicates how much gasoline we have left is in the red. Wouldn't it make sense to tamper with that needle and set it to the maximum when the real problem is that we lack gasoline? The same would happen with self-esteem. Low self-esteem would be indicative of a social acceptance problem or something has been done that implies social rejection and, therefore, it must be worked on, which is still the cause of the problem.

To help a person with low self-esteem, they must be taught skills that lead them to be more socially accepted, taking as consequence an increase in self-esteem: helping others, acquiring social skills, learning to play an instrument, obtaining an achievement socially valued... That is, promoting all kinds of behaviors that serve both to avoid social rejection and to promote inclusion Social.

As we said, the philosophy of most self-esteem workshops is that of "love yourself" but, What is it going to do to love ourselves if self-esteem depends on how loved we feel by others? the rest? If nobody loves us, it is very difficult for us to love ourselves, nor will we have high self-esteem, which will bring us pain.

It is not that we should not love ourselves or accept who we are, but to feel better the best is learn social skills that promote our inclusion in the reference group, since we cannot detach ourselves from our human nature, which is indisputably social. Naturally, having faith in yourself and being optimistic will help us achieve our goals, but underneath that there must be some truth, some skill that supports us.

If, for example, we are runners, it won't do us much good to tell ourselves how handsome we are. we are and that we are the best in the world because yes, something that is basically what the resources of self help. We will have to show that we are good runners, that we can run long distances without getting tired and show it to other people.

If we hardly go out for a run and we are also taking our liver right out of the box, we will not be able to prove anything, nor will people value us as good runners since we are not. On the other hand, if we manage to acquire the habit, we are able to run 10 kilometers without getting tired, we participate in several marathons and we win them we will be showing how good we are in that area, we will be socially valued and our self-esteem will grow.

Pathological self-esteem and lie detection

A curious and extreme case is what happens in the manic phases of tylar disorder. In this phase the individual is euphoric, very optimistic and happy: he feels he is the master of the world. This pathological happiness can even be contagious, dragging others into a state of joy and motivation and causing them to see the individual with this disorder as a successful and pleasant person, since people prefer happy and optimistic.

The problem with this extreme self-esteem is that it is a symptom, not the result of actual socially attractive abilities. Since his self-esteem is not a reliable indicator of reality, when someone reproaches him for everything what he said to be good at is not real the person gets irritated, feeling that he is being devaluing. In the heat of mania, he really believes in what he claims to be and any criticism of this is seen as a serious contempt, something that in extreme situations can make him aggressive.

It is worth mentioning that Within Evolutionary Biology there is a branch called Theory of Signals, dedicated to communication between individuals and, more specifically, to the issue of honesty in signs. It is no surprise that people, even with healthy self-esteem, present ourselves to others as more important and better than we really are. Interestingly, we are also designed not to be fooled when other people do the exact same thing.

The idea behind this is that, when we are the ones who present ourselves as most important, accelerate the approval of the group towards us, increase our self-esteem and feel like we have social protection, ensuring our survival. In case it is someone else who tries to make them important, we try to see to what extent it is true for avoid deception, something that could also damage our self-esteem when we discover deception after having trusted her.

Bibliographic references:

• Leary, M. R., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). The nature and function of self-esteem: Sociometer theory. In M.P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 32, pp. 1-62). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
• Leary, M. R., Tambor, E. S., Terdal, S. K., & Downs, D. L. (1995). Self-esteem as an interpersonal monitor: The sociometer hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 518-530.
• Malo, P. (2013). The Sociometer Theory of Self-Esteem. Spain. Evolution and Neurosciences. https://evolucionyneurociencias.blogspot.com/2013/01/la-teoria-del-sociometro-de-la.html