From an evolutionary perspective, self-esteem has developed as a monitoring mechanism for the quality of our relationships. The system monitors other people's reactions to our behaviors and sends an alarm that alerts us to any possible changes in our inclusion status. The monitoring system generally operates nonconsciously until it detects that our relational value is falling or low. When the alarm bell rings, the threat to our social bonds is pushed into conscious awareness and we evaluate the situation. Am I being accepted or am I being pushed out? Do I need to adjust my behaviors to fix the relationship? With such a high value for survival closely tied with relationships, it makes sense that the way we mobilize our internal resources around relationships would be highly networked in our brain and body. It also makes sense that we would develop specific mechanisms to attend to minimizing rejection and enhancing acceptance. The continuous scanning is normal, a part of being human. We all have an interpersonal process of searching for cues from the environment to assess our value in the social structure. Self-esteem works as a monitoring mechanism that signals that there might be problems in people's social bonds, allowing them to adjust their behavior to enhance relationships.