Short answers, pulled from the story.
Social psychologist Morris Rosenberg developed the Rosenberg self-esteem scale in the mid-1960s. This ten-item instrument became the gold standard for measuring how individuals value themselves after behaviorists had previously shunned the study of internal feelings.
California assemblyman John Vasconcellos launched the Task Force on Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility in 1986 with the goal of using self-esteem as a vaccine against societal ills ranging from crime and teen pregnancy to pollution. The task force disbanded in 1995 after scholars found only small associations between low self-esteem and the problems it was supposed to solve.
People with defensive high self-esteem internalize subconscious self-doubts and react with hostility and aggression toward anyone who questions their self-worth, a phenomenon known as threatened egotism. In contrast, those with secure self-esteem can admit mistakes and acknowledge failures without their self-image being compromised, allowing them to work toward goals with resilience.
Research conducted in 2014 by Robert S. Chavez and Todd F. Heatherton demonstrated that the strength of one's self-worth is linked to the connectivity of the frontostriatal circuit. This pathway connects the medial prefrontal cortex, which handles self-knowledge, to the ventral striatum, which processes feelings of motivation and reward.
The dreaded self serves as a constant threat to self-esteem by causing individuals to feel they are not living up to their ideals and leading to moderate to severe effects on their self-worth. This dynamic is particularly potent during adolescence, where peer relationships, academic performance, and societal beauty standards create a volatile environment that can shatter self-esteem through rejection.
Contingent self-esteem is derived from external sources like success, failure, or the approval of others, creating a cycle of instability and unreliability. Non-contingent self-esteem springs from the belief that one is acceptable simply by virtue of existing, meaning that one's worth is not dependent on their virtues or achievements but is an acceptance given in spite of guilt.