Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decisionmaking?: A Hedgefoxian Perspective

7. The Effects of Self-Esteem and Ego Threat on Decision Making

• 7 • The Effects of Self-Esteem and Ego Threat on Decision Making CATHERINE D. RAWN, NICOLE L. MEAD, PETER KERKHOF, AND KATHLEEN D. VOHS IT TAKES a constant stream of interpersonal decision making for people to be liked by others and to like themselves at the same time. Although often being liked and liking oneself go hand in hand, at times people make choices to give up on being liked in order to restore a positive selfimage or to temporarily have a less positive self-image to prevent social exclusion. Ego threat and concomitant emotions play a role in interpersonal decision making among people who are low and high in selfesteem . The literature on threats to the self, feelings about the self, and interpersonal perceptions offers theoretical and empirical evidence in support of the nonintuitive conclusion that people with high self-esteem do not fare any better than people with low self-esteem in terms of how others feel about them. In fact, high self-esteem people become less likeable when they feel threatened. If changes in decision making underlie changes in behavior, decision making patterns among high and low self-esteem people under conditions of threat or nonthreat may be important. Of the studies that have tested the effects of self-esteem, ego threat (and attendant emotions), and decision making, there is a subset that have tested directly the interrelation between threat and self-esteem. This literature demonstrates that low self-esteem people think first about 157 how to satisfy relationship concerns and second about how to take care of the self, whereas high self-esteem people think first about how to satisfy their own wishes and desires and second about others’ needs. These trends are excaberated by negative emotions that follow from ego threat. Following recent work (Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, and Zhang 2007), we propose that securing future positive emotional states underlies the interpersonal decisions both low and high self-esteem people make. Differences in the degree to which people experience self-conscious emotions in situations of ego threat shape expectations of future emotional states. These expectations in turn shape decisions relating to interpersonal behavior in a direction that helps to either be liked by oneself or by others. Differential Self-Perceptions as a Function of Self-Esteem We define self-esteem as a subjective attitude towards oneself (Baumeister et al. 2003; Coopersmith 1967; Rosenberg 1965). Essentially, it is an evaluation or perception of one’s self-worth (Leary et al. 1995). Accordingly, it is not a surprise that people with high self-esteem rate themselves more positively than do people with low self-esteem. For example, people with high self-esteem rate themselves as attractive (Diener, Wolsic, and Fujita 1995), intelligent (Gabriel, Critelli, and Ee 1994), popular (Battistich, Solomon, and Delucchi 1993), interpersonally competent (Buhrmester et al. 1988), and efficacious about their relationship skills (Chemers, Watson, and May 2000; Baumeister et al. 2003). Conversely, low selfesteem people are unconvinced that they are good short-term interaction partners (Campbell and Fehr 1990) or longer-term relationship partners (Murray, Holmes, and Griffin 2000; Murray et al. 2001) and, moreover, rate themselves as less attractive and intelligent relative to self-ratings among people with high self-esteem (Gabriel, Critelli, and Ee 1994). As is evident, the positive self-views held by people with high self-esteem means that they generally like and believe positive things about themselves (Brown 1993); this attitude extends to their self-beliefs about their social skills and interpersonal inclusion. Compared with low self-esteem people, high self-esteem people are more likely to believe that they are well liked (Brockner and Lloyd 1986). Self-Reports as Disconnected from External Views Researchers have found only scant relations in the association between self-ratings (by both high and low self-esteem people) and others’ reports or objective measures. For instance, despite the finding that high self158 Do Emotions Help or Hurt Decision Making? esteem people rate themselves as highly attractive, there is only a small correlation between people’s self-esteem and others’ ratings of their attractiveness (Diener, Wolsic, and Fujita 1995; Gabriel, Critelli, and Ee 1994). Similarly, self-reports reveal a strong relationship between selfesteem and self-ratings of intelligence, but an external measure of intelligence showed no relation to the target’s self-esteem (Gabriel, Critelli, and Ee 1994). Additionally, leadership ratings of military cadets, both in terms of a test of leadership and...