Jennifer K. Bosson

Stalking the perfect measure of implicit self-esteem: the blind men and the elephant revisited?

Recent interest in the implicit self-esteem construct has led to the creation and use of several new assessment tools whose psychometric properties have not been fully explored. In this article, the authors investigated the reliability and validity of seven implicit self-esteem measures. The different implicit measures did not correlate with each other, and they correlated only weakly with measures of explicit self-esteem. Only some of the implicit measures demonstrated good test-retest reliabilities, and overall, the implicit measures were limited in their ability to predict our criterion variables. Finally, there was some evidence that implicit self-esteem measures are sensitive to context. The implications of these findings for the future of implicit self-esteem research are discussed.

Self-Enhancement Tendencies Among People With High Explicit Self-Esteem: The Moderating Role of Implicit Self-Esteem

Consistent with recent research on initials-preferences, we assumed that peoples preferences for their initials reflect an implicit form of self-esteem that buffers them against challenges to their self-worth. Accordingly, we proposed that high self-esteem persons who demonstrated weak initials-preferences would be particularly likely to engage in compensatory self-enhancement activities. Results of two studies revealed converging support for this prediction: Among people high in explicit self-esteem, those with weaker initials-preferences displayed more unrealistic optimism, stronger preferences for an excessively positive personality profile, and smaller actual-ideal self-discrepancies. Findings are discussed in terms of the distinction between secure high self-esteem—which is generally linked with psychological health—and fragile high self-esteem—which is generally associated with personal and interpersonal difficulties.

When saying and doing diverge: The effects of stereotype threat on self-reported versus non-verbal anxiety☆

Abstract Although research has established that stigmatized individuals suffer impaired performance under stereotype threat conditions, the anxiety presumed to mediate this effect has proven difficult to establish. In the current investigation, we explored whether non-verbal measures would fare better than self-reports in capturing stereotype threat anxiety. Gay and heterosexual men interacted with preschool children under stereotype threat or control conditions. As predicted, stereotype-threatened gay men demonstrated more non-verbal anxiety, but not more self-reported anxiety, than non-threatened gays during these interactions. Furthermore, non-verbal anxiety appeared to mediate the effects of stereotype threat on the quality of participants’ childcare skills. We discuss how these findings advance stereotype threat research, and highlight their potential implications for gay childcare workers.

Do Narcissists Dislike Themselves “Deep Down Inside”?:

Narcissism is a personality trait associated with an inflated, grandiose self-concept and a lack of intimacy in interpersonal relationships. A popular assumption is that narcissists’ positive explicit (conscious) self-views mask implicit (nonconscious) self-loathing. This belief is typically traced to psychodynamic theory, especially that of Kohut (1966; Morrison, 1983). Empirically, this view predicts that narcissists will reveal negative self-views when these are measured with unobtrusive instruments—such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998)—that record people’s automatic, uncontrolled responses. Using the IAT, however, researchers found no simple relation between narcissism and implicit selfesteem (rs 5 .13 and .03; Jordan, Spencer, Zanna, HoshinoBrowne, & Correll, 2003; Zeigler-Hill, 2006). According to another line of thought, narcissists’ explicit selfviews are not uniformly positive; rather, narcissism is associated with positive self-views in agentic domains (e.g., status, intelligence), but not in communal domains (e.g., kindness, morality). Evidence for this idea comes from both explicit trait ratings, which show an association between narcissism and positive selfviews only on agentic traits (Campbell, Rudich, & Sedikides, 2002), and from analyses showing that narcissism is particularly strongly associated with self-esteem measures that capture dominance (Brown & Zeigler-Hill, 2004). Bradlee and Emmons (1992) and Paulhus and Williams (2002) have also reported personality data supporting this distinction. As narcissists do not evaluate themselves uniformly positively across all dimensions—and the self-esteem IAT measures the strength of cognitive associations between the self and an evaluative dimension—the lack of correlation between narcissism and implicit self-esteem might reflect the words used in the IAT. Specifically, IATs employing more agentic words may correlate positively with narcissism, whereas those using more communal words may correlate negatively or not at all with narcissism. Indeed, this pattern is seen in narcissists’ implicit responses on the Thematic Apperception Test. On this test, narcissism correlates positively with nPower and negatively with nIntimacy and nAffiliation (Carroll, 1987). Researchers often use IAT words that activate respondents’ communal self-views more than their agentic ones. For example, the IAT words used by Jordan et al. (2003; friend, gift, happy, holiday, joy, love, party, smile, sunshine, warmth, agony, cockroach, death, disaster, disease, evil, garbage, pain, stink, and vomit) and by Zeigler-Hill (2006; happy, joy, paradise, pleasure, smile, sunshine, agony, death, grief, pain, sickness, and tragedy) include several communal terms and few agentic terms. Twentyfour pilot respondents rated both word lists along agentic and communal dimensions. Both lists conveyed significantly more communion than agency, t(23)s > 4.50, preps > .997, which might explain the weak associations these researchers observed between narcissism and IAT scores. We tested our logic that narcissism correlates positively with implicit agency and negatively or not at all with implicit communion in two studies. Using the IAT words from Jordan et al. (2003), we tested the link between narcissism and implicit selfesteem in a sample of undergraduates. Next, we created separate IATs to measure agentic and communal implicit self-views and tested their associations with narcissism.

Attachment-Style Differences in Attitudes toward and Reactions to Feedback from Romantic Partners: An Exploration of the Relational Bases of Self-Esteem

The authors examined attachment-style differences in reliance on partner feedback to maintain self-esteem. First, they argue that those people who value relational sources of self-esteem are more open to and affected by partner feedback than those people who derive self-esteem from competence-based sources; these differences correspond to working models of self and others. Results revealed that individuals with negative other-models are relatively averse to partner feedback, and individuals with negative self-models are distressed by feedback. Second, the authors propose that, for some, partner feedback serves as a mechanism for maintaining global self-esteem; for others, feedback is irrelevant to self-esteem. Results confirmed that the association of attachment with self-esteem is fully mediated by sources of self-esteem and partially mediated by attitudes about and reactions to partner feedback. The authors discuss their results in terms of their implications for understanding relational bases of self esteem as well as working models.

Precarious Manhood and Its Links to Action and Aggression

Unlike womanhood, manhood is widely viewed as a status that is elusive (it must be earned) and tenuous (it must be demonstrated repeatedly through actions). This focus on the structure—rather than the content—of gender roles can shed new light on men’s use of action and physical aggression. Here, we review theory and research connecting manhood, action, and aggression. We interpret men’s aggression and aggressive displays as behaviors that effectively demonstrate manhood and thus quell men’s concerns about their gender status. Moreover, we suggest that situational and cultural factors that heighten the precariousness of manhood also increase the likelihood of male aggression.

Different Partners, Different Selves: Strategic Verification of Circumscribed Identities

It is proposed that people negotiate and receive verification for highly positive, relationship-specific selves. Study 1 indicated that although people wanted evaluations that were roughly consistent with their self-views on most dimensions, on a dimension that was crucial to a specific relationship (physical attractiveness in dating relationships) they wanted evaluations that far exceeded their self-views. Studies 2 and 3 showed that participants recognized that their desired evaluations exceeded their self-views but they expected to—and actually did—evoke exalted appraisals of their attractiveness from dating partners. Study 4 suggested that the desire to receive exceptionally positive appraisals on relationship-relevant dimensions generalized to other self-views and same-sex, nonromantic relationship partners. The authors conclude that people find ways of circumventing the conflict between their desires to be valued yet understood.

Self-Liking, Self-Competence, and the Quest for Self-Verification

Whereas past researchers have assumed that global feelings of self-worth guide people’s feedback-seeking activities, the authors propose that people’s more specific feelings of self-liking and self-competence are crucial in this domain. The authors found that only self-liking predicted perceived accuracy of and choice of feedback designed to bear on global, low self-esteem. In contrast, self-liking and self-competence each related uniquely to perceived accuracy of and choice of feedback that was designed specifically to target these self-views. Moreover, the data suggest that the relations between self-views and feedback preferences are mediated by people’s perceptions of the accuracy of feedback. The authors discuss the implications of their findings for a growing understanding of the dual components of self-esteem and for refining the methodologies used in feedback-seeking and self-esteem research.

Third Places and the Social Life of Streets

Urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg defines a third place as a place of refuge other than the home or workplace where people can regularly visit and commune with friends, neighbors, coworkers, and even strangers. Because little is known about the place-based physical qualities of third places that support sociability and place attachment, this article examines how four urban design characteristics distinguish third-place businesses from other businesses on the Main Street. The article discusses a study conducted at Main Streets in two cities and one town in Massachusetts. As part of the study, visual surveys measured urban design qualities of businesses on the Main Streets, and interviews helped determine user perceptions. The findings suggest that third places are relatively high in both personalization (distinctiveness, recognizability) and permeability to the street, but seating and shelter provisions are perhaps the most crucial urban design characteristics that contribute to sociability on the Main Street.

Gender dichotomization at the level of ingroup identity: what it is, and why men use it more than women.

In 5 studies (N = 756), we show that mens relative to womens gender ingroup identities are characterized by greater levels of gender dichotomization, a tendency to distance masculine from feminine traits. We demonstrate further that mens gender dichotomization is motivated, in part, by a need to eschew femininity from their ingroup identity to bolster a precarious gender status. Studies 1-3 establish and replicate the basic effect, and rule out alternative explanations (positivity, projection, status striving) for mens tendency to dichotomize more than women. Studies 4 and 5 demonstrate the motivated nature of gender dichotomization by establishing that men, but not women, dichotomize more strenuously when reminded of the precariousness of their gender status, and report stronger motivation to restore their gender status upon learning that their ingroup is becoming less dichotomized. Across 3 studies, strength of identification with their gender group moderates mens dichotomization tendencies. Discussion considers the implications of these findings for understanding the precarious nature of manhood and identifies practical applications of gender dichotomization in the interpersonal realm.