Ok, you could do that, but why ?

Why define self-esteem to include respect and thus "not bullying people," and then proclaim from the predictable results that people with high self-esteem don't bully others ? You would have stacked the deck from the start. I'm not criticizing your concept of self-esteem, I'm, just wondering how that expanded concept of self-esteem helps things in research, especially if the critics are right that self-esteem is an over-hyped goal as it is.

It's as if you're looking for a general measure of "human goodness," right ? I see it as a questionable scientific goal, because people don't agree on all priorities for which human traits are better than others and probably never will.

Just as a side comment about psych research in general, there's a good text I picked up recently called "Critical Thinking About Research," by Julian Meltzoff, APA Press. It has a lot of great examples of how measures are defined and interpreted in general.

kind regards,

Todd

Replies:

Re:Ok, you could do that, but why ?, by curious, 04/14/02 Measures vs.Theories of self-esteem, by Todd, 04/17/02 psych research, by neeru, 04/15/02 Re:psych research, by Todd, 04/17/02 Re:psych research, by neeru, 04/18/02

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