Validation and Self-esteem (Scientific Findings - 2)

Apology and Self-Esteem

According to Duke University psychologist Mark Leary, the feeling of being disliked, ostracized or rejected was specially designed by evolution to be particularly painful; subjectively speaking, being evaluated negatively by others can feel even worse than physical trauma. The reason that others’ negative evaluations affect us so deeply, Leary believes, has to do with our primate past.
"Unlike virtually every other species, the hominids could not rely on speed, flight, strength, arboreal clambering, burrowing or ferocity to evade predators. Many theorists in psychology, anthropology and biology have noted that human beings and their hominid ancestors survived and prospered as species only because they lived in cooperative groups. Given the importance of group living, natural selection favored individuals who not only sought the company of others but also behaved in ways that led others to accept, support and help them."

In other words, for a human being, only death itself ensures a speedier genetic demise than stigma and exclusion. To ensure that our ancestors were ever wary of their tenuous dependence on others, Leary proposes that they evolved a sort of subjective, psychological gauge that served to continually monitor their fluctuating “relational value,” an affective index of where the self stood in the eyes of other ingroup members. Generally speaking, the higher one’s relational value, the greater one’s reproductive opportunities and genetic fitness. Just as it continues to do today, this hypothetical “sociometer” generated emotional states that, collectively, were translated into what’s popularly known as our “self-esteem.” Assuming our sociometer isn’t broken or impaired, negative self-esteem is a kind of warning, then, that one is at serious risk of social (and therefore genetic) exclusion.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=sorriest-animal-forgiveness&sc=SA_20090615

Added on 20 Jan 2011:
Also please see
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-pain-of-exclusion&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20110119

"The above article says: "Even brief episodes of ostracism involving strangers or people we dislike activate the brain’s pain centers, incite sadness and anger, increase stress, lower self-esteem and rob us of a sense of control. We all feel the pain of ostracism about equally. Personality traits do, however, influence how well we cope."