Biofeedback At A Glance

In essence, biofeedback is an approach to work with tension/stress of which pertains supervising which aims to apply elective regulation over unconscious physical activities just like pulse rate, blood pressure level, skin conductance, and even muscular tension.

Image Sources: http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk

The basic concept is originated from animal testing (using laboratory rat) performed approximately five decades ago of which demonstrating that rats can adjust their own pulse rate if presented positive neurological stimulus each time their own heart beat accelerated or lowered. The approach that: "Thoroughly unconscious physical processes can get adjusted through controlled environment" was barely unique; Ivan Petrovich Pavlov had already shown this a long time ago, by monitoring and measuring salivation process of his own pet. Nevertheless, knowing the prospective healing utilization of the particular concept for stressed humans was completely new, thus, demanded cutting-edge devices, which leads to biofeedback technology that we know today.

Self-Esteem Based on Popular Psychology Perspective

While it is not really the same thing, self esteem is often considered as self confidence where both terms signify how an individual value and evaluate himself.

High self esteem indicated by positive perspective of self-assessment, while low self esteem indicated by negative perspective of self-assessment. It is believed that self esteem level is significantly impact our quality of life in many areas - with the assumption that the higher level of self-esteem we have, the better quality of life we get.


However, facts show us that it 'adjusts' perception rather than reality, and the majority belief (about self esteem) is mostly based around anecdotal evidence, not based on solid scientific studies

What Makes The Hype

Just like many kinds of pseudo science, the public interest is mainly driven by authorities. In 1986, California legislature gave enormous amount of money for the purpose of increasing self esteem level of California citizens. The authority believed that there are many California citizen that has low self esteem level, with assumption that low level of self esteem contributes to many social problem just like crime, welfare dependency, schoold failure etc.