Self-relevance as a moderator of self-enhancement and self-verification

We examined the influence of self-esteem on reactions to favorable or unfav orable feedback. We also varied the relevance of this information for parti cipants' self-image--the information was either low or high in self-relevan ce. When asked how important it was to personally perform well, low self-es teem persons were more likely to engage in self-enhancement in the low than in the high self-relevant context. This finding supports predictions deriv ed from Swann and Schroeder's (1995) analysis. Furthermore, low self-esteem participants engaged in self-enhancement strategies to a greater extent th an high self-esteem participants in the low self-relevant condition, wherea s an opposite pattern was obtained in the high self-relevant condition. Our analysis bridges the gap between two opposing schools of thought--one that believes that low self-esteem persons will evidence especially strong self -enhancement tendencies and the other that believes that it is high not low self-esteem persons that will demonstrate especially strong self-enhanceme nt tendencies. We discuss the importance of self-relevance for determining when self-enhancement and self-verification will and will not occur. (C) 19 99 Academic Press.