Self-Enhancement,Self-Protection as a Function of Esteem-Related Feedback and Success Contingency

Abstract

This experiment was conducted to assess the impact of esteem-related feedback and success-contingency on the self-protective/self-enhancing aspects of self-handicapping behavior. Following feedback about either contingent or noncontingent success on an intellectual task provided by a male experimenter, 67 male subjects randomly received either ego-enhancing or ego-diminishing feedback on an unrelated task (social skills) provided by a female experimenter. It was hypothesized that the effect of esteem-related feedback on an unrelated task (social skills) provided by the female experimenter would generalize to other ego functions and activate self-protective/self-enhancing processes. It was predicted that those individuals whose self-esteem had been lowered, whether in the conditions of contingent or noncontingent success would self-protect more in that they would be more inclined (1) to attribute their success externally, (2) to self-handicap by choosing the performance-inhibiting drug more often, (3) to show a lower expectancy of future success on retest, and (4) to self-protect by refusing more often to volunteer in a proposed high-risk experiment than those subjects whose self-esteem had been raised via ego-enhancing feedback on the unrelated task. Analysis showed that esteem-related affect did not generalize from the intellectual domain to the social-skills area or from the male to the female experimenter. The findings are discussed in terms of the compartmentalization of affect such that risk-taking reflected self-protection on tasks associated with the female experimenter while the remaining variables associated with the male experimenter showed no such effects.