(Press-News.org) Belonging to multiple groups that are important to you boosts self-esteem much more than having friends alone, new research has found.
CIFAR fellows Nyla Branscombe (University of Kansas), Alexander Haslam and Catherine Haslam (both University of Queensland) recently collaborated with lead author Jolanda Jetten on experiments to explore the importance of group memberships for self-esteem. Working with groups of school children, the elderly, and former homeless people in the United Kingdom, China and Australia, their studies showed consistently that people who belong to many groups, whatever their nature, had higher self-esteem. However, this relationship was only apparent when people considered the group in question to contribute to their sense of who they were -- that is, when they were a basis for social identity.
"This is in our view promising and suggests that boosting group memberships is quite a powerful way to make people feel better about themselves," Jetten says.
The researchers compared group memberships to the number of friends people had, and found that having a large network of friends did not predict self-esteem, but belonging to multiple groups did. The authors argue that groups provide benefits that interpersonal ties alone do not; namely, meaning, connection, support and a sense of control over our lives.
"Groups often have rich value and belief systems, and when we identify with groups, these can provide a lens through which we see the world," says Jetten. For example, religious groups or organisations striving toward a goal such as reducing poverty can provide a greater sense of purpose.
The new study could signal a shift away from thinking about self-esteem as something that comes solely from inside of us. "Rather than fetishizing self-esteem, a much better and probably healthier and more effective strategy is to encourage people to have rich social lives and multiple sources of social engagement. If you do that, one important by-product will be improved self-esteem, but there will be lots of other benefits too," Haslam says.
Research on groups represents a major theme in CIFAR's Social Interactions, Identity & Well-Being program. Previous research in this area by members of the group and their collaborators has shown that those who belong to groups tend to be healthier, happier and live longer. For example, a recent study by CIFAR Global Scholar Alumna Katharine Greenaway found that belonging to groups increased people's sense of personal control, and in turn their health.
INFORMATION:
The research was published in END
The environmental movement is making a difference - nudging greenhouse gas emissions down in states with strong green voices, according to a Michigan State University (MSU) study.
Social scientist Thomas Dietz and Kenneth Frank, MSU Foundation professor of sociometrics, have teamed up to find a way to tell if a state jumping on the environmental bandwagon can mitigate other human factors - population growth and economic affluence - known to hurt the environment.
"We've used new methods developed over the years and new innovations Ken has developed to add in the politics ...
Using Twitter and Google search trend data in the wake of the very limited U.S. Ebola outbreak of October 2014, a team of researchers from Arizona State University, Purdue University and Oregon State University have found that news media is extraordinarily effective in creating public panic.
Because only five people were ultimately infected yet Ebola dominated the U.S. media in the weeks after the first imported case, the researchers set out to determine mass media's impact on people's behavior on social media.
"Social media data have been suggested as a way to track ...
Vitamin D plays an important part in the human immune response and deficiency can leave individuals less able to fight infections like HIV-1. Now an international team of researchers has found that high-dose vitamin D supplementation can reverse the deficiency and also improve immune response.
"Vitamin D may be a simple, cost-effective intervention, particularly in resource-poor settings, to reduce HIV-1 risk and disease progression," the researchers report in today's (June 15) online issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers looked at ...
MAYWOOD, IL - Poverty is known to be a strong risk factor for end-stage kidney disease. Now, a first of-its-kind study has found that the association between poverty and kidney disease changes over time.
The percentage of adults beginning kidney dialysis who lived in zip codes with high poverty rates increased from 27.4 percent during the 1995-2004 time period to 34 percent in 2005-2010.
The study, by corresponding author Holly Kramer, MD, MPH and colleagues at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, is published in the journal Hemodialysis International.
Researchers ...
For the last decade, astronomers have observed curious "hotspots" on Saturn's poles. In 2008, NASA's Cassini spacecraft beamed back close-up images of these hotspots, revealing them to be immense cyclones, each as wide as the Earth. Scientists estimate that Saturn's cyclones may whip up 300 mph winds, and likely have been churning for years.
While cyclones on Earth are fueled by the heat and moisture of the oceans, no such bodies of water exist on Saturn. What, then, could be causing such powerful, long-lasting storms?
In a paper published today in the journal Nature ...
New research by NOAA, University of Alaska, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the journal Oceanography shows that surface waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas could reach levels of acidity that threaten the ability of animals to build and maintain their shells by 2030, with the Bering Sea reaching this level of acidity by 2044.
"Our research shows that within 15 years, the chemistry of these waters may no longer be saturated with enough calcium carbonate for a number of animals from tiny sea snails to Alaska King crabs to construct and maintain their shells ...
AUSTIN, Texas -- Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a groundbreaking new energy-absorbing structure to better withstand blunt and ballistic impact. The technology, called negative stiffness (NS) honeycombs, can be integrated into car bumpers, military and athletic helmets and other protective hardware.
The technology could have major implications for the design and production of future vehicles and military gear to improve safety.
The new NS honeycomb structures are able to provide repeated protection ...
ALEXANDRIA VA, JUNE 15, 2015 - A statistical analysis of poll performance in battleground states over the last three presidential elections shows polling firms produced estimates that were fairly accurate in 2004 and 2008, but underestimated support for President Obama in 2012, a new article reports.
The article's authors--Ole J. Forsberg and Mark E. Payton, professors in the department of statistics at Oklahoma State University--believe the culprit for bad polling in the 2012 election may have roots in "outdated and possibly flawed sampling methodology" that resulted ...
SAN FRANCISCO--For many generations, Bedouin people living in the Abu Dabbab area on the Egyptian Red Sea coast have heard distinct noises--like the rumbling of a quarry blast or cannon shot--accompanying small earthquakes in the region. Now, a new study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America offers an explanation for this uniquely noisy seismic event.
Seismic activity in the area of the Egyptian seaside resort Abu Dabbab may be caused by an active fault that lays below a 10-kilometer thick block of old, now rigid igneous rock. The surface of ...
(Philadelphia, PA) - It's long been known that scratching evokes a rewarding and pleasurable sensation in patients with chronic itch. Now, researchers in the Department of Dermatology and Temple Itch Center at Temple University School of Medicine (TUSM) may be closer to understanding why.
Using advanced fMRI imaging, the researchers looked at activity in the brain while 10 chronic itch patients and 10 healthy subjects scratched an itch. They found that areas of the brain involved in motor control and reward processing were more activated in chronic itch patients while ...
