Joachim I. Krueger

Does High Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness, or Healthier Lifestyles?

Self-esteem has become a household word. Teachers, parents, therapists, and others have focused efforts on boosting self-esteem, on the assumption that high self-esteem will cause many positive outcomes and benefits—an assumption that is critically evaluated in this review. Appraisal of the effects of self-esteem is complicated by several factors. Because many people with high self-esteem exaggerate their successes and good traits, we emphasize objective measures of outcomes. High self-esteem is also a heterogeneous category, encompassing people who frankly accept their good qualities along with narcissistic, defensive, and conceited individuals. The modest correlations between self-esteem and school performance do not indicate that high self-esteem leads to good performance. Instead, high self-esteem is partly the result of good school performance. Efforts to boost the self-esteem of pupils have not been shown to improve academic performance and may sometimes be counterproductive. Job performance in adults is sometimes related to self-esteem, although the correlations vary widely, and the direction of causality has not been established. Occupational success may boost self-esteem rather than the reverse. Alternatively, self-esteem may be helpful only in some job contexts. Laboratory studies have generally failed to find that self-esteem causes good task performance, with the important exception that high self-esteem facilitates persistence after failure. People high in self-esteem claim to be more likable and attractive, to have better relationships, and to make better impressions on others than people with low self-esteem, but objective measures disconfirm most of these beliefs. Narcissists are charming at first but tend to alienate others eventually. Self-esteem has not been shown to predict the quality or duration of relationships. High self-esteem makes people more willing to speak up in groups and to criticize the groups approach. Leadership does not stem directly from self-esteem, but self-esteem may have indirect effects. Relative to people with low self-esteem, those with high self-esteem show stronger in-group favoritism, which may increase prejudice and discrimination. Neither high nor low self-esteem is a direct cause of violence. Narcissism leads to increased aggression in retaliation for wounded pride. Low self-esteem may contribute to externalizing behavior and delinquency, although some studies have found that there are no effects or that the effect of self-esteem vanishes when other variables are controlled. The highest and lowest rates of cheating and bullying are found in different subcategories of high self-esteem. Self-esteem has a strong relation to happiness. Although the research has not clearly established causation, we are persuaded that high self-esteem does lead to greater happiness. Low self-esteem is more likely than high to lead to depression under some circumstances. Some studies support the buffer hypothesis, which is that high self-esteem mitigates the effects of stress, but other studies come to the opposite conclusion, indicating that the negative effects of low self-esteem are mainly felt in good times. Still others find that high self-esteem leads to happier outcomes regardless of stress or other circumstances. High self-esteem does not prevent children from smoking, drinking, taking drugs, or engaging in early sex. If anything, high self-esteem fosters experimentation, which may increase early sexual activity or drinking, but in general effects of self-esteem are negligible. One important exception is that high self-esteem reduces the chances of bulimia in females. Overall, the benefits of high self-esteem fall into two categories: enhanced initiative and pleasant feelings. We have not found evidence that boosting self-esteem (by therapeutic interventions or school programs) causes benefits. Our findings do not support continued widespread efforts to boost self-esteem in the hope that it will by itself foster improved outcomes. In view of the heterogeneity of high self-esteem, indiscriminate praise might just as easily promote narcissism, with its less desirable consequences. Instead, we recommend using praise to boost self-esteem as a reward for socially desirable behavior and self-improvement.

Social Projection to Ingroups and Outgroups: A Review and Meta-Analysis

Social projection is the tendency to expect similarities between oneself and others. A review of the literature and a meta-analhsis reveal that projection is stronger when people make judgments about ingroups than when they make judgments about outgroups. Analysis of moderator variablesjfirther reveals that ingroup projection is stronger for laboratory groups than for real social categories. The mode of analysts (i.e., nomothetic vs. idiographic) and the order of judgments (i.e., self or group judged first) have no discernable effects. Outgroup projection is positive, but small in size. Together, these findings support the view that projection can serve as an egocentric heuristic for inductive reasoning. The greater strength of ingroup projection can contribute to ingroup-favoritism, perceptions of ingroup homogeneity, and cooperation with ingroup members.

The Bystander-Effect: A Meta-Analytic Review on Bystander Intervention in Dangerous and Non-Dangerous Emergencies.

Research on bystander intervention has produced a great number of studies showing that the presence of other people in a critical situation reduces the likelihood that an individual will help. As the last systematic review of bystander research was published in 1981 and was not a quantitative meta-analysis in the modern sense, the present meta-analysis updates the knowledge about the bystander effect and its potential moderators. The present work (a) integrates the bystander literature from the 1960s to 2010, (b) provides statistical tests of potential moderators, and (c) presents new theoretical and empirical perspectives on the novel finding of non-negative bystander effects in certain dangerous emergencies as well as situations where bystanders are a source of physical support for the potentially intervening individual. In a fixed effects model, data from over 7,700 participants and 105 independent effect sizes revealed an overall effect size of g = -0.35. The bystander effect was attenuated when situations were perceived as dangerous (compared with non-dangerous), perpetrators were present (compared with non-present), and the costs of intervention were physical (compared with non-physical). This pattern of findings is consistent with the arousal-cost-reward model, which proposes that dangerous emergencies are recognized faster and more clearly as real emergencies, thereby inducing higher levels of arousal and hence more helping. We also identified situations where bystanders provide welcome physical support for the potentially intervening individual and thus reduce the bystander effect, such as when the bystanders were exclusively male, when they were naive rather than passive confederates or only virtually present persons, and when the bystanders were not strangers.

Use of categorical and individuating information in making inferences about personality

In three experiments, we explored the effects of categorical information (stereotypes) and case information (traits or behaviors) on judgments about an individuals characteristics. Subjects judged a target persons aggressiveness on the basis of a description containing both a broad social category and specific case information. In Experiment 1, the description included (a) a category that was either weakly or strongly related to aggressiveness and (b) a behavior that was unrelated, moderately diagnostic, or highly diagnostic of aggressiveness. Trait inferences were a function of both the stereotypic and the behavioral information. A single behavior was not sufficient to override the category effect. In Experiment 2, temporally consistent behaviors were presented as case information; under these conditions, category information had no effect on trait judgements. This finding was extended in Experiment 3 in which subjects predicted behaviors on the basis of the target persons sex and a moderately diagnostic trait.

Towards a balanced social psychology: Causes, consequences, and cures for the problem-seeking approach to social behavior and cognition

Mainstream social psychology focuses on how people characteristically violate norms of action through social misbehaviors such as conformity with false majority judgments, destructive obedience, and failures to help those in need. Likewise, they are seen to violate norms of reasoning through cognitive errors such as misuse of social information, self-enhancement, and an over-readiness to attribute dispositional characteristics. The causes of this negative research emphasis include the apparent informativeness of norm violation, the status of good behavior and judgment as unconfirmable null hypotheses, and the allure of counter-intuitive findings. The shortcomings of this orientation include frequently erroneous imputations of error, findings of mutually contradictory errors, incoherent interpretations of error, an inability to explain the sources of behavioral or cognitive achievement, and the inhibition of generalized theory. Possible remedies include increased attention to the complete range of behavior and judgmental accomplishment, analytic reforms emphasizing effect sizes and Bayesian inference, and a theoretical paradigm able to account for both the sources of accomplishment and of error. A more balanced social psychology would yield not only a more positive view of human nature, but also an improved understanding of the bases of good behavior and accurate judgment, coherent explanations of occasional lapses, and theoretically grounded suggestions for improvement.

On the Perception of Social Consensus

Publisher Summary Humans, as social creatures continually perceive others and predict what others think, feel, and, most importantly, what they will do. Various branches of social psychology have addressed questions posed by this basic need for prediction and in specific about impression formation, interpersonal relations, and group stereotypes. It is noted that social perceptions and predictions must be reasonably accurate to be effective. Perceptions of the social world can become destructive if they are grossly distorted. Perceivers own behavior, values, or their visual perspective uniquely affect their judgments. Such egocentric variations underscore the subjectivity of social perception. This chapter aims to examine these egocentric distortions in perceptions of social consensus. The perception of social consensus is the idea that the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others are similar to ones own. The chapter provides a brief review of the history of projection research, which establishes that the interest in this phenomenon is old and has intrigued investigators of differing theoretical persuasions.

Enhancement Bias in Descriptions of Self and Others

Self-enhancement bias is the tendency to describe oneself more positively than a normative criterion would predict. This article reviews the common-rater and common-target paradigms for the assessment of enhancement bias and proposes a social-normative paradigm as an alternative. In this paradigm, enhancement bias is conceptualized as an egocentric pattern of discrepancies between self-ratings and relevant social norms. Correlations between a persons ratings of trait descriptiveness and ratings of trait desirability indicate the degree of enhancement (or diminishment) when the group averages of these ratings are controlled. Two studies demonstrate that most people self-enhance, expect others to self-enhance, and abstain from self-enhancement when instructed to estimate the social norms. Results suggest that enhancement is a controllable bias rather than a cognitive illusion.

The self in social judgment

Introduction. Chapter 1: Self as Source and Constraint of Social Knowledge, Joachim I. Krueger, Mark D. Alicke, & David A. Dunning. Part I: Social Projection. Chapter 2: Social Projection and the Psychology of Choice, Joachim I. Krueger & Melissa Acevedo. Chapter 3: Cross-Situational Projection, Leaf Van Boven & George Loewenstein. Part II. Self-Enhancement. Chapter 4: Shallow Thoughts about the Self: The Automatic Components of Self-Assessment, Thomas Gilovich, Nicholas Epley, & Karlene Hanko. Chapter 5: The Better-Than-Average Effect, Mark D. Alicke & Olesya Govorun. Part III. Self and Others Compared. Chapter 6: The Knife that Cuts Both Ways: Comparison Processes in Social Perception, Thomas Mussweiler, Kai Epstude, & Katja Ruter. Chapter 7: A Feature-Based Model of Self-Other Comparisons, Sara D. Hodges. Chapter 8: Self-Other Asymmetries in Behavior Explanations: Myth and Reality, Bertram F. Malle. Part IV: Integrative Approaches. Chapter 9: Judging for Two: Some Connectionist Proposals for How the Self Informs and Constrains Social Judgment, Emily Balcetis & David Dunning. Chapter 10: A Hierarchy Within: On the Motivational and Emotional Primacy of the Individual Self, Lowell Gaertner & Constantine Sedikides. Chapter 11: The Ingroup as Part of the Self: Reconsidering the Link between Social Categorization, Ingroup Favoritism and the Self-Concept, Sabine Otten. Conclusion. Chapter 12: The Self in Social Perception: Looking Back, Looking Ahead, David A. Dunning, Joachim I. Krueger, & Mark D. Alicke

From social projection to social behaviour

Social projection is a judgemental heuristic that allows people to make quick and reasonably accurate predictions about others. The first part of this paper presents a review of the status of projection as a highly (though not fully) automatic process, its separateness from superficially similar processes of self-stereotyping, and its implications for intergroup perception. The second part places social projection within the context of the theory of evidential decision making, which highlights the benefits and the liabilities of projection in social dilemma situations. The main benefit is that projection can enhance cooperation within a group by leading individuals to believe that their own behavioural choices will be reciprocated. However, when interpersonal social dilemmas are nested within intergroup dilemmas, differential projection (i.e., strong ingroup projection paired with weak outgroup projection) yields collectively undesirable outcomes.

The primacy of self-referent information in perceptions of social consensus

Peoples own responses to a social stimulus (i.e. whether they endorse it or reject it) predict how they expect other people to respond (consensus estimates). This correlation has long been accepted as evidence for social projection. There has been little direct evidence, however, for the assumption that self-referent judgments shape judgments about others. Supporting the projection model, Expt 1 shows that self-referent information is more accessible than consensus estimates. Once they have been made, peoples own endorsements and rejections of a stimulus facilitate consensus estimates. In turn, consensus estimates facilitate endorsements (but less so). Judgments about the physical properties of the stimulus facilitate neither type of social judgment. Supporting the view that projection is egocentric, Expt 2 shows that, when making consensus estimates, people rely more on their own endorsements than on the endorsements made by another individual. This self-other difference does not depend on whose endorsements are revealed first or on whether the other person is anonymous or individual.