[Psychologist Jean M. Twenge, in her 2007 publication, Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - And More Miserable Than Ever Before asserts a fascinating statistic. In the 1950s, 12% of teens agreed with the statement, "I am important' - by the 1980s, a staggering 7 times that many, that's 80%, agreed with that same statement. So, we're doing a good job of boosting self-esteem, right? Well, here's the catch.
An exhaustive 2005 study published in Scientific Americanby psychologist, Florida State University professor and PT Interactions Blogger Roy Baumeister demonstrated that less than 200 of the more than 15,000 articles published on self-esteem between 1970 and 2000 met any sort of standard for academic or scientific rigor.
Baumeister's Scientific American article, in addition to both challenging and largely discrediting the existing research on self-esteem, also demonstrated that artificially boosting self-esteem actually lowers performance. Further, high self-esteem was found to have no positive correlation with a person's ability to have successful relationships. Quite to the contrary, Baumeister writes, "Those who think highly of themselves are more likely than others to respond to problems by severing relations and seeking other partners."