Other
Abstract:
The sociometer approach to understanding
self-esteem presents that people’s feelings
of self-worth serve as a barometer for how
relationally-valued they are in the important
groups to which they belong. There
undoubtedly exists a natural confound between
rank on valued attributes and the likelihood
of being accepted by a group, however. One
could argue that people who do not rank
highly on at least one valued attribute
remain vulnerable to experiencing relational
devaluation. Furthermore, people who believe
that they have no attribute that provides
high ranking will feel like imposters even if
group members accept them. We investigated
the influence of inclusionary status on state
self-esteem as a function of ranking status
in two studies. In these studies, college
student participants received false ranking
feedback on academic and social intelligence
tests. Then, they were either included or
excluded by group members for a later
activity. We predicted that inclusionary
feedback would interact with ranking status
such that high-ranking participants who were
included would report the highest levels of
state self-esteem. Moreover, low-ranking
participants who were included despite their
inferior status would evidence an “imposter”
effect, reporting lower state self-esteem
than excluded participants. Across both
studies, state self-esteem was influenced by
both ranking and inclusionary conditions.
Though the predicted interaction effect was
not revealed, rejection reduced the
self-esteem of high-ranking participants and
acceptance increased the self-esteem of
low-ranking participants. Future studies will
focus on the “imposter” effect by exploring
how it may depend on performance
expectations, and how it may be alleviated.