True or false: "At times I think I am no good at all. I am unable to do things as well as most people. All in all, I am inclined to feel that I'm a failure."

If you answered "true," chances are good that you're Czech. A new global survey ranks the Czech Republic fourth from the bottom in self-esteem.

The aim of the International Sexuality Description Project is to see how sexuality and personality traits vary and are related across cultures. "We wanted to know whether people with high self-esteem tend to have certain sexual attitudes," says Dr. David Schmitt, founder of the study and chairman of the psychology department at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.

The study looked at nations considered either "individualistic" or "collective" - that is, where people think of themselves more as individuals or as part of a community.

Respondents in individualistic countries (such as the United States and Australia) ranked higher in self-competence (I feel I am good at what I do) than people from collectivist cultures (such as Mexico and Japan), who rated themselves higher in self-liking (I feel good about myself as a person). So how did the Czech Republic get to be so low?

Dr. Petr Weiss, clinical psychologist at the Institute of Sexology at Charles University and the local coordinator of the project, says he wasn't surprised by the results. "Not after 40 years of collectivist education, when every difference was suspicious and unwanted. In the most socially flat country after North Korea, you could not expect anything else."

Dr. Vindhu Maggu, a sociology professor at the University of New York in Prague, agrees. "The changing social, economic and political scenario in the Czech Republic, especially over the last 15 years, has probably been very challenging and difficult," she says. "People find there is much more competition to attain their objectives in life."

Dr. Schmitt sees the results a little differently. "The participants were relatively young college students, and that is certainly a limit of the study," he says. "So perhaps it is only when you are young and getting an education that Czech individuals feel lower than most other cultures."

Since the main focus of this study is the combination of sexuality and personality traits across cultures, previous studies of Dr. Weiss' may also help explain the low self-esteem of Czechs.

"According to our representative studies of sex behavior of the Czechs, both males and females have the highest numbers of sex partners, the highest numbers of extramarital affairs and the most liberal sexual attitudes in the world," he says.

If a negative self-image promotes promiscuity, perhaps someone should tell the neighbors. Slovaks fared only slightly better than Czechs, finishing seventh from the bottom. At the other end of the scale, European nations in the top 10 include Estonia, Turkey, Croatia, Austria and No. 1 - Serbia.

How to improve the Czech self-image? Schmitt offers this advice: "One key to increasing self-esteem is to diversify one's self-concept. If I think about myself only in terms of one domain - say, as a psychologist - then I am susceptible to feeling bad when my worth as a psychologist is challenged."

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