Self-Esteem vs. Confidence
In xiota's thread about maternal instincts, mellyjc raised a very interesting point about self-esteem and confidence in teenage females. She pointed out that a lot of teenage girls have problems with self-esteem and confidence as a result of poor parenting, lack of encouragement to pursue their individual goals, and indoctrination with traditional notions of sex-based identity. Certainly this rings true for a lot of young women, and I think mellyjc was right on the money in alluding to this phenomenon as part of our discussion on gender-based instincts.
However, since this is the INTJ community and we seem to be on something of a posting spree today, I'm going to ask the next question in the logical chain. Women who were raised to be assertive and individualistic rather than submissive and conformist can still experience self-esteem and confidence issues during their teenage years. So what, if not the suppression of female assertiveness, accounts for self-doubt in such women? Certainly a variety of congenital psychological disorders can contribute to self-doubt in a specific arena, but from where do macroscopic self-esteem issues spring?
Moreover, are self-esteem and confidence the same creature? I posit that they are related but fundamentally different entities. Self-esteem, to me, is the internal perception of personal worth. It has a moral, affective dimension, and is a formidable driving force in the individual's treatment of himself/herself. I define confidence as the external manifestation of faith in one's abilities. It centers not around abstract notions of value but rather concrete notions of potential, and constitutes a primary determinant of the individual's behavior around others.
Finally, is the process of distinguishing between self-esteem and confidence unique to Thinking personalities, to NT rational personalities, to INTJ personalities specifically, or to any other combination of traits? I'm guessing that if I posed these questions to Feeling types, they would be more likely to view self-esteem and confidence as indistinguishable from one another, and I think Perceivers might be less inclined to make this distinction than Judgers as the latter are usually more given to meticulous analysis.
Thoughts?
However, since this is the INTJ community and we seem to be on something of a posting spree today, I'm going to ask the next question in the logical chain. Women who were raised to be assertive and individualistic rather than submissive and conformist can still experience self-esteem and confidence issues during their teenage years. So what, if not the suppression of female assertiveness, accounts for self-doubt in such women? Certainly a variety of congenital psychological disorders can contribute to self-doubt in a specific arena, but from where do macroscopic self-esteem issues spring?
Moreover, are self-esteem and confidence the same creature? I posit that they are related but fundamentally different entities. Self-esteem, to me, is the internal perception of personal worth. It has a moral, affective dimension, and is a formidable driving force in the individual's treatment of himself/herself. I define confidence as the external manifestation of faith in one's abilities. It centers not around abstract notions of value but rather concrete notions of potential, and constitutes a primary determinant of the individual's behavior around others.
Finally, is the process of distinguishing between self-esteem and confidence unique to Thinking personalities, to NT rational personalities, to INTJ personalities specifically, or to any other combination of traits? I'm guessing that if I posed these questions to Feeling types, they would be more likely to view self-esteem and confidence as indistinguishable from one another, and I think Perceivers might be less inclined to make this distinction than Judgers as the latter are usually more given to meticulous analysis.
Thoughts?