Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Snake-Oil and self-esteem

A Polly Toynbee article from long-ago. But I'll bet nobody remembers it!
Occasionally a new piece of research demolishes a myth with one fell blow. It does not happen often (social research tends to run along familiar tracks), but once in a while an iconoclastic study changes ideas. No one reading Self-Esteem - The Costs and Causes of Low Self-Worth by Professor Nicholas Emler of the LSE, should feel quite at ease again using a modern piece of psychobabble that has infused the language of sociology, criminology and education without real scrutiny until now.


Here is the whole thing.

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