people with high and low self-esteem to say " I am a lovable person ." They then measured the participants ' moods and their feelings about themselves . In the low self-esteem group , those who repeated the mantra felt worse afterwards compared with others who did not . However people with high selfesteem felt better after repeating the positive self-statement - but only slightly .
7 The psychologists then asked the study participants to list negative and positive thoughts about themselves . They found that , paradoxically , those with low self-esteem were in a better mood when they were allowed to have negative thoughts than when they were asked to focus exclusively on affirmative thoughts . Writing in the journal , the researchers suggest that , like overly positive praise , unreasonably positive self-statements , such as " I accept myself completely ," can provoke contradictory thoughts in individuals with low self-esteem . Such negative thoughts can overwhelm the positive thoughts . If people are instructed to focus exclusively on positive thoughts , negative thoughts might be especially discouraging .
8 See the Nicolas Emler : “ The Emler report 2001 , The causes and consequences of low self worth .”
9 Mark Schaller a psychologist at the University of British Columbia studied the lyrics of Curt Cobain ( the rock star who committed suicide ) -Cole Porter and the short story writer John Cheever . He wanted to investigate whether there was an increase in personal pronouns ( I , me , myself , mine etc .) before and after they became famous . He surmised that narcissists use more personal pronouns and fame makes people more narcissistic .
10 He did , indeed , find an increase in self referential statements after fame . His paper ( 1997 ' The psychological consequences of fame : three tests of the self consciousness hypothesis , journal of personality , 65,2,291-309 ) He seemed to find a correlation between high self referential statements both before fame AND after fame and later mental problems and suicide ( such as the case with Kurt Cobain , Michael Hutchins and other famous suicides )
About Mark Tyrrell
Psychology is my passion . I ' ve been a psychotherapist trainer since 1998 , specialising in brief , solution focused approaches . I now teach practitioners all over the world via
our online courses .