Self-esteem acts as a physiological vaccine against fear and adversity

Evidence

Lacking self-esteem, we are like Harry Harlow’s poor monkeys raised in isolation by wire mothers. We are persistently apprehensive, terrified by novel and unexpected events, in poor physical health, and prone to self-destructive and aggressive outbursts. Conversely, braced by self-esteem, we are encouraged and enthused—and thereby able to parry both psychological and physical adversity. Our experiment with the electrical shocks showed how self-esteem is a powerful vaccine against fear, not just psychologically, but also on a deeply physiological level. And many of us will fight to preserve our self-esteem in the same way that worms and bats will fight to stay alive, because for us humans self-esteem is our symbolic protection against death. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 269

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the earlier electrical-shock experiment in this book on self-esteem as buffer; also parallels social capital isolating the self from environmental shocks.

Related

• Self-esteem is embodied, not just mental, and blunts death-anxiety (similarity 0.84)
• Self-esteem is a core survival need, not a luxury. (similarity 0.81)
• Boosting self-esteem reduces measurable physiological anxiety responses (similarity 0.80)
• Self-esteem is as vital as food for human psychological survival (similarity 0.80)
• Meaning alone is insufficient; self-worth within the worldview is required for security (similarity 0.79)
• Self-esteem functions as protection against the terror of death (similarity 0.78)