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PAUL BARTOLO 1. BELONG AND FLOURISH – DROP OUT AND PERISH The Belongingness Hypothesis ABSTRACT This chapter sets out the research evidence that highlights the social nature of human beings. It first describes psychological theory about a positive sense of self-esteem as the foundation of one’s wellbeing. It then shows how one’s sense self-esteem is in turn based on one’s feeling of being accepted and esteemed by others. This human sensitivity to inclusion and exclusion by others is elaborated in ‘the belongingness hypothesis’. An account is then given of social neuroscience experiments using fMRI showing how people are highly sensitive to being left out even in simple computer games, and how social pain is registered in the brain in a similar fashion to physical pain. Similarly, research shows how human wellbeing is enhanced while the impact of stress and illness is reduced through connections with others. In conclusion it is suggested that a community that aims to enhance the wellbeing of its members needs to promote inclusive structures and processes. Keywords: self-esteem, belonging, social neuroscience, inclusion, wellbeing INTRODUCTION This chapter sets out the research evidence that highlights the social nature of human beings and that human wellbeing is enhanced through positive relations with others. It first describes how psychologists have argued that our search for wellbeing, in terms of being the best that we can be, is founded on a positive sense of self-esteem. It then shows how one’s sense of self-esteem itself appears to be founded on our feeling of being accepted and esteemed by others. This need to be accepted by others has been formulated as ‘the belongingness hypothesis’. This human sensitivity to inclusion and exclusion by others has been supported by social neuroscience experiments using fMRI, that show how people are extremely sensitive to being left out even in simple computer games, and how social pain is registered in the brain in a similar fashion to physical pain. This is supported by research on how human wellbeing is enhanced, and the impact of stress and illness is reduced, through connections with others. Finally, an account is given of how the sense of belonging and self-worth is © KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004394179_002 Natalie Kenely - 2542-9825 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:09:41PM via free access P. BARTOLO also influenced by one’s social identity and the way and the status of the groups with which one categorises oneself and is in turn associated with by others. In conclusion it is suggested that a community that aims to enhance the wellbeing of its members needs to promote inclusive structures and processes. SELF-ESTEEM INFLUENCE ON WELLBEING Recent research on wellbeing has moved from a hedonic to an eudaimonic perspective: the hedonic view ties well-being to a subjective condition of getting what one wants and the pleasure of such enjoyment; the eudaimonic approach equates well-being with living well in the sense of being the best that one can be or actualizing one’s potentials (Ryff & Singer, 2008; Schueller, 2013). The enjoyment of eudaimonic wellbeing has in turn been strongly linked to how we feel about ourselves – often termed as our level of self-esteem. A search under ‘self-esteem and well-being’ ‘in the title’ on the Web of Science core database yielded 95 articles (February 2017) published in the last seven years. At a more popular level, a search for books under ‘self-esteem’ on the Amazon website yielded 87,598 items. A healthy sense of self-esteem means you feel good about yourself as you are, that you are a worthy individual (Mruk, 2013). This gives one a sense of subjective wellbeing. Self-esteem is understood to affect not only one’s wellbeing and life satisfaction, but also one’s emotions, motivation, thinking, behaviour, social relations and achievement throughout life. Positive self-esteem has been argued to be a basic human need (Greenberg, 2008). Low self-esteem, that is seeing yourself as not acceptable to yourself and others, has been found to be related to much human misery such as higher rates of teen pregnancy, alcohol and drug abuse, violence, depression, social anxiety, and suicide (Guindon, 2010). The concept of self-esteem was first raised by two humanistic psychologists. Alfred Adler had been among the inner circle of Freud, but he clashed with Freud’s main theory that the root of human motivation was the libido or sexual drive. Adler proposed instead that each individual person’s life was motivated by a struggle to overcome a “feeling of inferiority” – a fear that he or she ‘may be hurt or trodden upon’ (Adler, 1930, p. 10). He emphasized the uniqueness of each individual “engaged in a constant struggle to develop … with an unconsciously formed but ever present goal – a vision of greatness, perfection and superiority” (p. 5). Self-esteem was later addressed more explicitly by Abraham Maslow (1943, 1971). Maslow too suggested that human beings were innately motivated by basic needs and drives towards personal growth. He researched mostly what he saw as the highest human need which he called ‘self-actualisation’, that is the human tendency to seek to actualise one’s potentials, capacities and talents. However, in a hierarchical pyramidal metaphor, he suggested that this ‘higher’ or ‘growth’ need could only be addressed if other more basic needs at the bottom of the pyramid were satisfied. He listed four such needs that had to be met before one could engage in the search for self-actualisation, namely, in bottom-up order, ‘physiological 8 Natalie Kenely - 2542-9825 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:09:41PM via free access BELONG AND FLOURISH – DROP OUT AND PERISH needs’, ‘safety needs’, ‘love’ or ‘belongingness needs’, and ‘esteem’ needs. Maslow actually distinguished two types of ‘esteem needs’: one is our sense of competence, self-efficacy and confidence which Maslow describes as ‘self-respect’ or ‘self- esteem’; and the other is the recognition of our achievements by others, which Maslow calls ‘self-esteem from others’ (Maslow, 1943). There are debates as to whether one can have self-esteem or self-respect without esteem from others. Adler had linked the human motivation to improve oneself as a struggle to overcome a feeling of inferiority which in Maslow’s terms can be seen as the search for ‘esteem from others’. Adler had linked this sense of inferiority to evolution, arguing that human beings are among the weaker animals in terms of physical strength, and each individual, during the developmental period, also carries a feeling of inferiority in his or her relations both to adults and the world at large (Adler, 1961). He also noted as further evidence of the human need to depend on others the fact that human infants required a much longer time to grow into maturity and independence than any other animal (Adler, 1964). A similar human need to be esteemed by others has also been proposed by sociologists through ‘Social Comparison Theory’. Its originator was the sociologist Leon Festinger (1954) who saw human motivation and behaviour as determined by social pressures. He made no reference at all to Adler. However, the two theories do overlap as Festinger had suggested that social comparison serves the two related human motivations of self-evaluation and the search for self-improvement. Social comparison theory later added a third motive, namely self-enhancement. This refers to using or avoiding comparisons in order to enhance one’s self concept or self- esteem (Gibbons & Buunks, 1999). Thus, both Adlerian and Social Comparison theories underlined first of all that human motivation is primarily social (Buunk & Nauta, 2000). Both also imply that a person’s wellbeing is negatively affected if one feels inferior to others. And both imply that this leads to a striving for superiority (Adler) or search for status and prestige (Buunk et al., 1999). Both make a link to Darwin’s theory on the evolutionary competition for survival of the fittest, as stated above and is evident in the following statement of social comparison theorists: Engaging in social comparisons is … a very fundamental aspect of human nature, and an important determinant of wellbeing. … As many other social animals, humans compete with each other for status and prestige in groups, and social comparison assists individuals in determining their rank in the group, in assessing what others find attractive in them, and, importantly, in providing information on how one should change one’s behaviour to obtain favourable outcomes. (Buunk & Nauta, 2000, p. 281) SELF-ESTEEM AS A SOCIOMETER – MONITORING OUR LEVELS OF ACCEPTANCE More recently, an attempt has been made to link the above needs of love or belongingness and self-respect and esteem by others to one more fundamental human need: the need 9 Natalie Kenely - 2542-9825 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 01:09:41PM via free access P. BARTOLO to belong. Leary (2003), who himself had initially started studying self-esteem, came to the conclusion that one’s feelings of self-esteem were not only associated with the need to belong, but rather that feelings of self-esteem were actually a gauge of one’s satisfaction of their need to belong. He suggested that self-esteem might be an internal, subjective ‘marker or monitor of the individual’s ‘inclusionary status. He therefore named it a ‘sociometer’. Such a sociometer would raise one’s feeling of self-esteem in response to situations that confirm one’s acceptance, while any indication of being ignored or rejected will be felt as a lowering of the feeling of self-esteem.