Self-affirmation is a person’s need to achieve a certain social status or increase their self-esteem, which is very closely related.
What is social status?
This term means the position of a person in society. Be it family, kindergarten, school, work. Each of us is a carrier of several statuses, because we can all be children, pupils, students, husband, wife, subordinates, bosses, elderly, young, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, dark-skinned, Orthodox, etc. Throughout life, these characteristics may vary.
Social status can be inborn, attained, and attributed. The first is given at birth and changes in rare cases (race, nationality), the second is achieved thanks to its skills and talents, and the third is the one attributed to society, it can and should change (age, position in the family).
Social Status Criteria
Of course, there are criteria by which a person’s social status is determined, for example:
- education;
- income;
- ethnic background;
- position in the system of division of labor;
- profession.
By the way, the latter is usually attributed to the main status of a person.
What is self-esteem?
Self-esteem is a person’s opinion of himself. Most often they evaluate their capabilities and personal qualities. Many people know that it is understated, adequate and overstated. Some psychologists emphasize adequately lowered and adequately high self-esteem, while others are convinced that only low and normal can happen. Let's get it right.
Low self-esteem - a subjective attitude of a person to his personality, which is characterized by cowardice and rejection of himself. There may be no good reason to think so of your self, but there are motives for such self-perception. Most often, these grains were sown in childhood by parents or respected adults, and in their youth - by peers.
A person with adequate self-esteem objectively perceives his capabilities and other personality characteristics.
Overpriced self-esteem is characterized by an exaggeration of all their achievements.
According to leading psychologists, there is only an underestimated and adequate self-esteem, and an overestimated one is a deliberate or subconscious mechanism that works to hide an underestimated one.
How to understand the term "self-affirmation"?
We figured out two components of this concept - this is "self-esteem" and "social status".
Self-affirmation is a behavioral manifestation that psychologists often describe in negative tones. But let's not forget that there are people with different values, upbringing and methods of their improvement.
If a person is shy, modest, cultured, but with low self-esteem, then his actions will be aimed at increasing self-esteem through diligence and well-deserved approval.
If a person asserts himself who has a disturbed perception of ethical standards, who does not want to work on himself from the inside out, to grind himself out as a person, but only direct his actions to adapt the environment to his Ego, then he will resort to accusations, criticism and condemnations of others.
As you can see, the path to social self-affirmation can be different. The first road is more difficult, long, but reliable, and the second is shorter, but very shaky.
Affirmation Strategies
We can assume that self-affirmation is a synonym for self-actualization in the Maslow pyramid.
There are many different strategies to achieve the desired status, self-esteem or increase self-esteem, but at the moment, psychologists distinguish three main:
1. Suppression of another through criticism, humiliation.
2. A constructive strategy develops the value of your self by maintaining interest in other people and working on yourself.
3. Denial, when a person feels personal weakness in order to cultivate a sense of self-worth in himself, he psychologically joins another person and lives someone else's life.
How does the first strategy work?
We must say right away that this method is used by people with inadequate self-esteem. It is possible that on the part of a person seems arrogant and self-confident. In fact, this is a protective mechanism that carefully hides discontent with oneself, possibly self-loathing and a subconscious sense of one’s social futility.
This person, most likely, tried to assert himself by the constructive method, applied efforts, worked on himself, but in that environment this turns out to be negligible. No effort has helped to achieve the desired social level and recognition.
It’s good to consider this as an example of competitions or olympiads. If a participant really counted on victory, he prepared 20 hours a day, and in the end received an “honorable” fourth place. Such an outcome of events threatens with a state of frustration, complete dissatisfaction. Often at critical moments, the personality is scrapped, and it begins to change its strategy and switch to less honest methods.
It is very strange if a person has no need for self-affirmation. Such people, in principle, do not exist. There are simply spheres of self-realization that are hardly visible or understandable to others due to age, environment, profession, etc.
What methods does the follower of this strategy resort to?
1. Intentional humiliation.
2. Unjustified insult.
3. Dispute as a way to provoke conflict and devalue the opponent’s words.
4. The verbal exaltation of oneself over others.
5. Negative suggestion.
6. Aggression.
If the child’s self-affirmation is based only on these methods, we can talk about a lack of attention from parents or even domestic violence.
If they don’t praise for good deeds, but scolded for bad deeds, then he sees no reason to continue to behave decently. When a child fools, they at least pay attention to him, and this is already valuable. This mechanism can disrupt all ethical standards in the head of a small person, and in the future it will not be difficult for him to step over morality.
Constructive strategy
This way of personal self-affirmation is characteristic of people with adequate self-esteem. It may be lower or higher depending on the situation. It is absolutely normal if a person fails, which provokes a temporary decrease in self-esteem, or wins and raises his opinion of himself.
Minimal fluctuations in self-esteem - this is not a deviation. It is important how a person brings his mental state back to normal. Adherents of a constructive strategy achieve the desired through their own efforts.
All that they have achieved on their own is the "fireproof" level, below which it is hard to fall. Maybe, but it's worth the effort.
These people often live in strict discipline, in constant efforts, in search of new methods of self-expression.
Denial strategy
We can say that this strategy is typical for people with very low self-esteem, but this is not entirely true. This person simply does not know who he is, he does not have any achievements (perhaps they are, but they do not make sense for this person), he does not set goals, lives without a vector. Such individuals cannot take responsibility, because they are sure that they will not affect the course of events in any way, nothing depends on them.
If the adolescent’s self-affirmation is in the nature of denial, then the following causes are possible:
1. In the family there is hyper-custody, there he is a full member of the micro-community, but the real society does not accept it or even rejects it.
2. Hypo-care in the family or lack of a positive attitude towards the child, the suggestion that "he is nobody", "worthless", domestic violence.
3. In rare cases, a strong psychological shock.
4. Mental illness.
Self-denial can even be called a lack of desire for self-affirmation. Often adolescents adhere to leaders or reference personalities and fully live life with them: they feel that they are on the heels of anxiety for their “idols”.
If you are not in a real environment of worthy personalities, you can switch to actors, singers or other celebrities, fully identify with them, closely monitor their life. It helps people feel full. What they see on the screen, they perceive as real events, due to which they believe that they live a full life.
So, we found out that self-affirmation is a set of strategies, and a person can change them depending on situations or changes in worldview.