Self-serving Responses Arising From Discrepancies Between Explicit and Implicit Self-esteem

Recent evidence highlights the importance of distinguishing between secure and fragile high self-esteem when examining self-protective and self-enhancement strategies. The research reported here examines one way to make this distinction, namely discrepancies between individuals' explicit and implicit self-esteem. Study 1 focused on self-promotion and Study 2 focused on out-group derogation. Our findings indicated that compared to participants whose measured explicit self-esteem was congruent with situationally activated implicit self-esteem, participants whose explicit and implicit self-esteem were discrepant were more self-promoting (Study 1) or more negative in their ratings of an out-group member (Study 2). These findings converge with findings from other research that link heightened self-serving responses to discrepancies between implicit and explicit self-esteem. We discuss the implications of our findings for the secure - fragile high self-esteem distinction.