Social Psychology. Daniel W. Barrett

in a group of people of a different race—may not replicate the effects of actually being in that group. Finally, the utility of survey research depends upon the sample of individuals who participate in it—responses from Caucasian college students in Boston may not reflect those from Argentinians in Buenos Aires.

      Self-Report: Individual’s conscious response to a question or situation

      Response Effects: Unintended variations in question responses that stem from procedural aspects or features of the survey instrument, such as the wording of a question or the order of the questions

      Acquiescence Bias: Tendency to agree with or say “yes” to questions

      Extremity Bias: Tendency to provide answers that are at the extremes of the response options

      Context Effects: Variations in responding because of survey features encountered prior to answering a question

      Surveys: Questionnaires that consist entirely of self-report items that can be administered on paper, computer, online, or in interviews

      Think Again!

      1 What are the advantages of self-reports?

      2 What are the disadvantages of self-reports?

      3 What are the three types of response biases?

      Evaluating How We Are Doing

      Self-Esteem

      Let’s say that you have a pretty good grasp of your self-concept—who you are as a person. How do you feel about the person you are? Do you like your personality, your social skills, your competencies, your relationships? Are there qualities or characteristics that you’d like to change? Your positive or negative evaluation of yourself as a whole is called your self-esteem (MacDonald, 2007; Rosenberg, 1965, 1989). In contrast to self-concept, which is who you are, self-esteem reflects how you feel about who you are (Carmichael, Tsai, Smith, Caprariello, & Reis, 2007; Sharma & Agarwala, 2014). If you have a generally positive view of yourself, then you have relatively high self-esteem. If instead you generally feel bad about yourself, your self-esteem is relatively low.

      When laypeople talk about self-esteem, they typically mean global self-esteem, which is an overall evaluation of your whole self that encompasses many narrower self-evaluations confined to particular domains (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001; Schmitt & Allik, 2005). Self-esteem is a multifaceted construct, as you may have different evaluations of yourself regarding various elements of your personality, social skills, and competencies, with more weight given to those that are important to you (Crocker, Luhtanen, Blaine, & Broadnax, 1994; Wagner, Hoppmann, Ram, & Gerstorf, 2015). Perhaps you consider yourself to be a pretty good student, a reliable friend, an unusually skilled musician, and a poor public speaker. If most of your self-concept is associated with how you perform as a musician, for instance, your self-esteem is heavily dependent on how you do in just that one domain. A failure or setback in that domain—such as blowing an audition for a band—can be quite devastating. In contrast, a person whose self-esteem is drawn from many domains—musician, student, long distance runner, parent, and so forth—tends to be more resilient, because any one setback is not as important. Self-esteem based on performance in multiple domains tends to be more stable. Self-esteem stability, in turn, helps predict how we will feel from day to day, as stable self-esteem means that a person’s self-image will not bounce around in response to everyday pleasures and pains, setbacks, and successes.

      Not surprisingly, people with high self-esteem also exhibit more self-esteem stability (Seery, Blascovich, Weisbuch, & Vick, 2004; Wagner et al., 2015). Crocker and Wolfe (2001) call the way in which self-esteem draws from multiple domains the contingencies of self-worth (L. E. Park & Maner, 2009). College students tend to derive most of their self-esteem from their academic performance, moral behavior, identity, approval from others, appearance, and religion (Crocker, Luhtanen, Cooper, & Bouvrette, 2003). There may also be genetic influences on both the level and stability of self-esteem (Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006).

      Why do people want high self-esteem? One explanation is that high self-esteem feels better than low self-esteem, and people obviously prefer the former. In this sense one can argue that people want a positive self-image or high self-esteem because it feels good. That is of course accurate, but it may only be part of the story. According to the sociometer hypothesis, self-esteem is closely linked to the quality of the relationships we have with other people (Kavanagh, Robins, & Ellis, 2010; Leary, 1999, 2005). Given the enormous importance of our memberships in groups for survival and reproduction, people are particularly sensitive to social inclusion and exclusion. As a consequence of evolutionary pressures, humans have developed a psychological mechanism—the sociometer—that assesses the strength and importance of those relationships—what Leary (2005) calls their relational value. Self-esteem, then, is essentially an index of that relational value: how much you think important others value their relationships with you or accept you (MacDonald, 2007). In other words, how you feel about yourself is closely tied to how you feel others evaluate you. The sociometer hypothesis has been empirically supported both by cross-cultural research (MacDonald, 2007) and studies of brain functioning, in which a specific part of the brain—called the ventral anterior cingulate cortex (vACC)—is uniquely responsive to feedback regarding one’s acceptance or rejection by others (Heatherton, Krendl, Macrae, & Kelley, 2007).

      Self-esteem has important implications for how we view and respond to the world—we often see the world through a lens of self-protective mechanisms designed to shield self-esteem from bumps and bruises (more on this later) (Carmichael et al., 2007). In general, people strive to have high self-esteem and to instill it in their children (Crocker & Park, 2004). People assume that high self-esteem a good thing—but is it? Well, it depends on how high. Reasonably—but not excessively—high self-esteem is clearly adaptive and is positively correlated with overall physical and psychological health, especially if it is also stable (Kernis, 2005). People who have high self-esteem tend to demonstrate greater self-reported well-being, life satisfaction, better coping, and more positive affect, and persist longer at completing tasks, including difficult ones (Sedikides & Gregg, 2003). Furthermore, low self-esteem is related to poor health outcomes, signs of psychological distress (including hopelessness, anxiety, and depression), and increased vulnerability to personal failures and setbacks. However, excessively high self-esteem is associated with more aggression, bullying, and exhibitionism (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, & Vohs, 2003). Despite the central role of self-esteem in psychological functioning and the enormous quantity of research focused on it, questions remain about how best to measure self-esteem (see Self-Reflection 4.1) (Falk & Heine, 2015; Koole, Dijksterhuis, & van Knippenberg, 2001; Kwan & Mandisodza, 2007; Pelham et al., 2005).

      What about gender and ethnic differences in self-esteem? We often hear that men generally have higher self-esteem than women (Williams & Best, 1990). By and large, that is correct, although the difference is not great. Interestingly, the disparities between the sexes tend to be found only for women in the middle and lower classes. This is likely due to the fact that women in these circumstances are less able to obtain desirable occupational positions than men: They are excluded to a greater extent from important domains of life (Major, Barr, Zubek, & Babey, 1999). These gender differences emerge during adolescence and adulthood, after females have been subjected to devaluation and discrimination (Kling, Hyde, Showers, & Buswell, 1999). Moreover, the differences are found primarily between Caucasian men and women: Women and men minorities generally don’t differ in their levels of self-esteem. Lastly, although there is a perception that minorities have lower self-esteem than Caucasians, the picture is more complex. African Americans tend to have higher self-esteem than do Caucasians, but the self-esteem of members of Asian, Hispanic, and Native American groups tends to be lower (Twenge & Crocker, 2002).

      What influences our self-esteem? For one thing, individuals with a clearer self-concept—what is called self-concept clarity—have higher self-esteem than those with more ambiguous self-concepts (Campbell, 1990; Usborne &