AVOIDANCE OF SELF-AWARENESS FOLLOWING EGO THREAT IN PEOPLE WITH DEFENSIVE AND CONTINGENT HIGH SELF-ESTEEM

Past research has shown that people with defensive and contingent high self-esteem often employ a variety of defense mechanisms to diminish ego threats resulting from discrepancies between their actual and ideal selves. In the present study, it was hypothesized that avoidance of self-awareness might be another such defense mechanism that people with these self-esteem subtypes use. Participants received false positive or negative feedback on a “flexible thinking” task; their eye movements were then tracked as they viewed photographs of themselves and others. I expected that, following negative feedback, individuals with defensive and contingent high self-esteem would fixate less on photographs of themselves relative to photographs of others. Consistent with the hypothesis, individuals with contingent high self-esteem did avoid self-awareness following ego threat; however, individuals with defensive self-esteem did not. More research is necessary to better understand the situations in which people with defensive self-esteem avoid self-awareness. FRAGILE SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-AVOIDANCE 2 Avoidance of Self-Awareness Following Ego Threat in People with Defensive and Contingent High Self-Esteem Consider a professional man in a high-stress job. Having worked for many years to reach his current position, this man prides himself on his success at work and believes himself to have a highly coveted skill-set relative to his co-workers. He is not modest about his accomplishments and has treated his friends and family to dinner in celebration of his professional triumphs on more than one occasion. Nonetheless, in a recent annual performance review, his boss expresses disappointment at slow progress on a current project. If the project is not completed efficiently and successfully in a month’s time, the man’s yearly bonus might be at stake. Upon leaving his boss, the man promptly returns to his office, slams the door, and calls his wife to inform her that he is working for an incompetent fool. In view of this man’s previous track record of professional success and demonstrated awareness of his own talents, both of which suggest he has high self-esteem, his strong negative reaction to his boss’s criticism seems surprising. However, recent investigations into self-esteem have shown that some people who would otherwise appear to have high self-esteem respond defensively to ego threats. Such adverse reactions are the result of discrepant levels of two different dimensions of self-esteem, explicit and implicit, that often have interactive effects on a person’s behavior and self-concept. Both explicit and implicit self-esteem consist of positive or negative attitudes that people hold about themselves, but the explicit dimension concerns people’s conscious self-esteem, whereas the implicit dimension concerns people’s unconscious self-esteem. Until very recently, researchers considered explicit self-esteem to be the sole determining factor in whether or not a person had high or low self-esteem. FRAGILE SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-AVOIDANCE 3 Explicit Self-Esteem Decades of studies have revealed that people with low explicit self-esteem differ in many respects from those with high explicit self-esteem. People with low explicit self-esteem are somewhat more likely to be juvenile delinquents or victims of bullying; have fewer interpersonal successes, higher depression rates, and higher prevalence of eating disorders; and display antisocial tendencies (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003). In contrast, high explicit self-esteem correlates weakly with better job performance, good long-term health, and the ability to cope with stressful situations (Baumeister et al., 2003). People with high explicit self-esteem are also significantly more likely to persist in the face of failure, and they report being significantly happier and more confident in their abilities compared with people with low explicit self-esteem (Baumeister et al., 2003). Though high explicit self-esteem has been shown to correlate positively with a variety of favorable outcomes, studies reveal that there are some important drawbacks to elevated levels of self-esteem. In general, people with high explicit self-esteem report having greater intelligence, physical attractiveness, and social skills compared with an average person; however, analysis of intelligence tests or performance in similar problem-solving tasks as well as physical attractiveness and interpersonal success ratings from peers reveal that people with high explicit self-esteem tend to grossly overestimate themselves (Baumeister et al., 2003). This overconfidence in their abilities can lead to unrealistic optimism and impossibly high expectations for future success. Driven by their skewed beliefs about their abilities, people with high explicit self-esteem may persist after failure in an attempt to achieve goals that are, in fact, unattainable. Such inaccurate views of self can be debilitating when repeated failures challenge a person’s self-concept. FRAGILE SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-AVOIDANCE 4 Measures of Explicit Self-Esteem Though explicit self-esteem research has yielded much data regarding attitudes toward the self and the possible effects thereof, such studies are inherently problematic because the methodology used to assess explicit self-esteem relies primarily on self-report measures. These measures most often take the form of surveys, such as the well-known Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, in which participants use a Likert-type scale to rate the extent to which they agree with declarative statements about the self (e.g., “I feel that I have a number of good qualities”) (Rosenberg, 1965). Because of the transparent nature of self-report measures, it is easy for people to guess that the survey gauges self-esteem. As a result, people often engage in impression management, responding in a manner that casts them in a better light than more accurate responses might. Self-esteem studies that rely solely on these falsified self-reports would result in data that inaccurately predict true attitudes toward the self and related behavior. Another problem with studies that use only self-report measures is that people may not be aware of their attitudes toward the self. Thus, their responses do not reflect their true assessment of their own self-worth, because some dimensions of their self-esteem are inaccessible to conscious thought (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). This problem with self-report measures led researchers to consider the existence of implicit, or unconscious attitudes toward the self, and more recent studies have used both explicit and implicit measures to assess selfesteem. Measures of Implicit Self-Esteem Measures of implicit self-esteem solve both of the problems noted above. First, they reduce impression management because it is often difficult for people to determine exactly what an implicit measure is assessing, and so cannot alter their responses to enhance themselves. FRAGILE SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-AVOIDANCE 5 Second, they are able to assess attitudes of which people may not even be aware. Though many different types of implicit measures exist, two are most commonly used in studies of self-esteem. The first involves initials preferences. Participants rate each letter of the alphabet according to how pleasing they feel it is. Research has shown that people with high implicit self-esteem are more likely to rate letters that appear in their own name, especially first and last initials, as significantly more pleasing than others rate them (Bosson, Brown, Zeigler-Hill, & Swann, 2003). Likewise, participants with low implicit self-esteem rate their own initials as significantly less pleasing than others do. Though initials-preferences measures have been validated (Bosson, Swann, & Pennebaker, 2000), the most widely used measure of implicit self-esteem is the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald & Farnham, 2000). This test requires that participants categorize stimuli that appear one at a time in the center of a computer screen as one of two target concepts (e.g., self vs. other) or attributes (e.g., pleasant vs. unpleasant) using one key on each side of the keyboard (e.g., “d” and “k”). Target-concept and attribute categories are paired (e.g., self/unpleasant, other/pleasant) and mapped on these two computer keys that correspond with the left and right side of the screen. For example, in one test block, self/unpleasant would appear on the left side of the screen, and participants would categorize all stimuli relevant to self and unpleasant using the “d” key. Likewise, other/pleasant would appear on the right side of the screen, and participants would categorize all stimuli relevant to other and pleasant using the “k” key. If participants struggle with a certain mapped pair, as evidenced by significantly longer response latencies, it is likely that the two categories are incompatible with their implicit attitudes. Thus, people who struggle to categorize selfand pleasant-related stimuli on the same side of the screen and using the same key have low implicit self-esteem. FRAGILE SELF-ESTEEM AND SELF-AVOIDANCE 6 The variety of measures available through which researchers can examine implicit and explicit self-esteem allows researchers to gain a more thorough understanding of a person’s true attitudes toward the self. Presently, self-esteem is no longer classified as simply high or low. Instead, both implicit and explicit dimensions of self-esteem must be considered, resulting in multiple self-esteem classifications: secure high (high explicit, high implicit), low (low explicit, low implicit), damaged (low explicit, high implicit), and defensive (high explicit, low implicit). Disparities between explicit and implicit self-esteem, as in the cases of damaged or defensive self-esteem, are known as discrepant self-esteem subtypes. Defensive self-esteem can also be defined as high explicit self-esteem and