Effects of Personal and Universal Helplessness upon Self-Esteem

Abstract

To test effects of personal and universal helplessness on self-esteem, three groups of experimental subjects completed a self-esteem questionnaire, worked on unsolvable anagrams, completed a posttest self-esteem questionnaire, and estimated their success on an angle-matching task. Subjects in a 10% failure group were led to believe they failed all anagrams, while 9 other subjects succeeded. Subjects in a 50% failure condition were led to believe they failed all anagrams while 50% of the subjects succeeded. Subjects in a 100% failure condition believed they, and 9 other subjects, failed all anagrams. Control group subjects were not exposed to failure. A 2 × 4 (sex x condition) analysis of variance, with difference between pretest and posttest self-esteem scores as the dependent variable, showed a significant main effect for success/failure conditions and sex of subject, and a significant interaction. On the angle-matching task significant main effects for success/failure and sex were observed.