Self-esteem's importance is higher in women (vs men); and there are cultural differences, it is higher in Euro-Canadians (vs Asian-Canadians)

Naïve beliefs about self-esteem's importance. Thomas I.Vaughan-Johnston, Jill A.Jacobson. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 173, April 2021, 110635. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110635

Highlights

• Beliefs about self-esteem's importance are measured via SEI scale.

• SEI shows stability across weeks to months.

• SEI is higher in women (vs men); Euro-Canadians (vs Asian-Canadians).

• SEI relates to more contingent self-worth and extrinsic motivation.

• SEI related to sensitivity to social acceptance vs rejection.

Abstract: The importance of having high self-esteem is frequently debated in academic and public domains, and believing that high self-esteem causes good outcomes has recently been introduced as an impactful individual difference variable. For example, naïve theories about self-esteem's causal influence (e.g., believing that high self-esteem protects one's health) is related to an increased pursuit of self-enhancement. However, several critical qualities of the self-esteem importance scale (Vaughan-Johnson & Jacobson, 2020) remain unexamined, and we explore these questions across four main and two supplementary studies (total N = 1997). Self-esteem importance beliefs were stable across time and distinct from other self and motivational constructs. Consistent with expectations derived from prior research and theory, we found cultural (European-Canadian vs. Asian-Canadian) and gender differences on self-esteem importance. Finally, we demonstrate that high scorers on the self-esteem importance scale anticipate heightened responses to rejection vs. acceptance scenarios. Thus, self-esteem importance beliefs are chronologically stable, are relatively independent from past self-related variables, reflect known group differences from past research, and are linked with an amplified sensitivity to social threat versus reward. These findings support key theoretical claims made about the self-esteem importance construct, and suggest likely unintended consequences of promoting self-esteem's consequentiality.

Keywords: Self-esteemImportanceNaïve theoriesSelf-enhancement