Naive beliefs about self-esteem's importance

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, naive 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.

Automated summary

The study examined the stability of self-esteem importance beliefs over time, their distinctiveness from other self and motivational concepts, and the related cultural and gender differences. Those who scored high on self-esteem importance were found to exhibit heightened responses to social threats.