Feeling good about oneself, being bad to others? Remarks on self-esteem, hostility, and aggressive behavior

The relation between self-esteem (i.e., a person's global, evaluative view of his/her self), and aggressive behavior is discussed in the light of empi rical findings and theoretical formulations presented in the field. There h ave been different theories connecting aggression to either low or high sel f-esteem while neither view has been uniformly supported by clear empirical evidence. A plausible suggestion, also supported by empirical findings, is that it is a certain subset of people who report a high self-esteem who ar e aggressive. Despite their self-confident surface and, consequently, self- reports of high self-esteem, these people have underlying insecurity regard ing their self-view. Empirically, such insecurity is reflected, for example , in the instability of their self-esteem, or by their grandiose, narcissis tic, and defensive characteristics. It is suggested that instead of studyin g self-esteem as unidimensional continuum from "low" to "high," qualitative distinctions should be made, for instance, between differ ent types of unh ealthy self-esteem, such as disparaging and underestimating self versus nar cissistically refusing to see anything negative in oneself. It is the latte r type, not the former, which seems to be associated with aggressive behavi or. Further, it might be clarifying to take into account distinctions that are typical of modern aggression research, such as that between proactive a nd reactive, or indirect and direct aggression, in research connecting self -esteem and aggression. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.