Strengthen Your Self Esteem: Insights on Belonging and Social Approval | Dr. Mark Leary

Mark Leary (0:01)

I think the best way to feel good about yourself is to do an inventory of all of your characteristics and behaviors that make you potentially valuable to the people around you.

And I think most people, if they do that, will be surprised. It doesn't take much.

Michael Gervais (0:26)

All right, welcome back, or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist. And today we're taking a deep dive into two very powerful concepts, self-esteem and belonging. We're doing that with Dr. Mark Leary. Mark is a former professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, retiring after 39 years, who has published 14 books and over 250 scholarly articles and chapters on topics such as social motivation, emotion, and self-relevant thought. He's also a disruptor. And that's not something that I usually say in association with professors of psychology and neuroscience. But in this case, it's appropriate because Mark's sociometer theory didn't just make waves. It created a whole new ocean in the field of psychology. It was a groundbreaking idea that redefined self-esteem. It's a perspective that turned heads and opened minds in a way that challenged academics and practitioners alike. What makes Mark's work resonate with me and many others is how it transforms self-esteem into a practical, usable tool. It's moving from a theory to a framework for personal growth and leadership and understanding the core of human connections.

These insights, they've been instrumental in my own professional work in the areas of self-esteem and belonging. And needless to say, I'm beyond excited to have this conversation with Mark. It's like stepping into a treasure trove of psychological insights. In this episode, we're peeling back the layers on all things self-esteem and belonging, whether you're leading a team, competing in sports, studying for your future, or simply navigating the complexities of daily interactions.

There's a wealth of practical tools waiting for you in this conversation. So rethinking self-esteem can help us apply it in ways that we might not have ever imagined. And so with that, let's jump right in and explore with Dr. Mark Leary.

Mark, this is really exciting for me because you've done landmark research in two areas that I've been fascinated by, self-esteem and belonging.

So I'd love to jump right into self-esteem if that's cool for you.

Mark Leary (2:51)

Okay, sorry, me.

Michael Gervais (2:52)

Okay, good. So back in 2012, you published the theory that upended the commonly held view on self-esteem. And I don't know if you meant to be disruptive, but I definitely want to understand that part of you.

Now, there's huge implications for our entire community, including me, at home and inside of organizations, for the lens that you put on self-esteem and how we think about it. Can you talk about that disruptive nature and the difference between the commonly held view and the one that you disrupted with?

Mark Leary (3:30)

Sure. That's a good place to start.

For the first 15 years of my career, I avoided the topic of self-esteem like it was the play.

Almost everything I studied, which has to do with people's thoughts about themselves, that sort of core thing that centers all my research around.

Almost everything I studied, people would say, well, how does this relate to self-esteem? And I couldn't answer the question. The concept of self-esteem completely baffled me. Because for years, people had suggested that we have an inherent need for self-esteem, that a lot of our behavior is motivated by a desire for self-esteem, that we should work very hard to have high self-esteem, we should give kids high self-esteem.

And frankly, none of that made any sense to me.

And the reason is this, self-esteem is how good we feel about ourselves, how positively or negatively do we evaluate ourselves. And yes, we all want to feel good about ourselves. It's better to think that you're a good, decent person than a bad person. But why would we have a need just to feel good about ourselves and boost our self-esteem even when it's not necessarily deserved? You know what I mean? Sometimes we don't deserve to have high self-esteem. I couldn't make self-esteem fit in my understanding of human nature. So I avoided it. I tried not to talk about it. I didn't understand it. There were proposals around the country in the early 1990s to raise everybody's self-esteem. They'll behave better. They feel better about themselves. That's increased kids' self-esteem. And on one hand, that sounded good, but it also just didn't make sense. Well, you mentioned the other topic that you want to talk about, and that's the topic belonging and acceptance. And at the time, I was studying acceptance and belonging, how people seek acceptance, the importance of being accepted by other people, how we react when we feel rejected.