1. Kinga Lachowicz-Tabaczek PARTICIPANTS AND METHOD
Can low self-esteem individuals benefit more from intrinsic than extrinsic self-affirmation?
Irena Makower
Evidens University College (Göteborg)
Magdalena Piosek
University of Wrocław
Kinga Lachowicz-Tabaczek
University of Wrocław
BACKGROUND
RESULTS
There is still a need to increase our knowledge about how to enhance authentic (healthy) self-esteem, especially of those people who have low level of self-esteem as a disposition.
In line with Claude Steel’s theory, self-affirmation is a way of coping with threat to self-regard by affirming one’s adequacy and “one’s sense of global integrity” (Steele, 1988). Until now, self-affirmation was mainly examined in the context of external threat, and turned out to increase the ability to cope with stress, to reduce defensiveness, to protect self-worth and boost global feelings of adequacy (see for a review Howell, 2017). At the same time, the results obtained by Schimel et al., (2004) indicated that affirmation of the intrinsic aspects of the self (which reflect the true self of a person) led to better cognitive and behavioral outcomes after confronting with threat than affirming the extrinsic aspects of the self (which are contingent on others’ approval).
People with low self-esteem (LSE) suffer from constant internal threat to their feeling of adequacy. Thus, self-affirmation may have a general beneficial effect on their self-worth, irrespective of the presence of the external threat.
To verify the predictions, we checked if global (trait) self-esteem moderates the impact of experimental conditions on explicit state self-esteem measured by RSES and implicit state self-esteem measured by NLT and NLM.
To this end we employed multiple linear regression analyses, which revealed that the predicted interaction between experimental condition and global self-esteem was observed only on NLM measure of implicit self-esteem (F (3, 173) = 3,42; p <0,02) explaining 3% of the total 6% variance of implicit state self-esteem.
Contrast coding was used to code all conditions. Tests of the simple slopes (Cohen et al., 2003) demonstrated (see Fig. 1) that implicit self–esteem among LSE individuals (– 1 SD) was significantly higher in the intrinsic self-affirmation than in the extrinsic self-affirmation (β = .17, SE = .07, t (171) = 2.28, p < .03), as well as in comparison with the control group (β = .17, SE = .07, t (171) = 2.28, p < .03).
THE PRESENT RESEARCH
The aim of the present study was to investigate if self-affirmation can be a method of increasing implicit and explicit momentary self-esteem among people with low trait self-esteem.
We predicted that LSE individuals would benefit more from affirmation of intrinsic aspect of the self than from affirming the extrinsic aspects of the self, as they react negatively to positive feedback on success or to compliments from others, even with a tendency to anxiety and to backfire (see Marigold, et al., 2007). As high self-esteem individuals (HSE) have high feeling of adequacy, we also predicted that self-affirmation used without external threat would not be so advantageous for them as for LSE individuals, and would not lead to changes in their momentary explicit and implicit self-esteem.
Fig.1. Implicit self-esteem measured by NLM (Name Liking Measure) as a function of experimental conditions and global self-esteem. Effects are plotted at high (+1 SD) and low (-1 SD) levels of self-esteem.
Note. LSE – low self-esteem, HSE – high self-esteem.
PARTICIPANTS AND METHOD
The participants were 178 women, students from pedagogical and psychological fields of study, aged between 19 and 22.
During the first part of the study participants completed Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1965) in the Polish adaptation, used to measure global explicit self-esteem as a trait.
About a week later participants were randomly assigned into three conditions:
1) affirmation of intrinsic self, by reflecting and vividly remembering an event in life which best reflect one’s true self (after Schimel et al, 2004);
2) affirmation of extrinsic self, by reflecting and vividly remembering an event when a person was “truly” praised by another person for an achievement (after Schimel et al, 2004);
3) vividly remembering a neutral, routine, everyday event, such as grocery shopping.
After the manipulation, participants, completed (among other measures) the questionnaires which measured self-esteem as a state:
 Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965), which measures explicit self-esteem;
 Name Letter Test (NLT; Nuttin, 1985), which measures implicit self-esteem by the ratings of the alphabet letters with the calculation of indicators for the evaluation of initials;
 Name Liking Measure (NLM; Gebauer et al., 2008), which measures implicit self-esteem by asking about level of liking the first name.
CONCLUSIONS
The results indicate that affirmation of different aspects of the self (extrinsic vs. intrinsic) affected implicit self-esteem of LSE individuals in different ways. As expected, LSE individuals benefited from affirmation of intrinsic aspects of the self, but did not benefit from affirmation of extrinsic aspects of the self. However this was observed only when implicit self-esteem was measured by Name Liking Measure.
In line with Steele's self-affirmation theory it can be conjectured that the affirmation of extrinsic self (like e.g. being praised by others for achievement) is not beneficial for LSE's self-worth and integrity because it focuses on socially imposed contingencies of self-worth. In contrast, intrinsic affirmation helps people to focus on self-determined bases of self-worth and, as a result, to feel authentic and secure.
These results indicate that self-affirmation of intrinsic self may be a promising intervention for increasing implicit self-esteem of LSE individuals.
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Selected sources
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