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Social acceptance and self-esteem: tuning the sociometer to interpersonal value.
Danu B Anthony1, John G Holmes, Joanne V Wood
1Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada. dbanthon@uwaterloo.ca
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
|June 6, 2007
Summary
Self-esteem is linked to traits that gain social acceptance, which varies by social role. Appearance and popularity are key for most, while communal roles prioritize traits like kindness.
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Personality Psychology
Background:
- Sociometer theory posits self-esteem functions as a gauge of social acceptance.
- Self-esteem's attunement to specific traits is influenced by the social roles individuals occupy.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how social roles shape the attunement of self-esteem to different traits.
- To test the hypothesis that trait importance for social acceptance varies across social roles.
Main Methods:
- Assessed self-esteem attunement indirectly to mitigate self-report biases.
- Utilized correlations between self-esteem and self-ratings, cognitive accessibility measures, and an experimental social decision-making task.
Main Results:
- Self-esteem generally showed stronger attunement to appearance compared to communal qualities.
- Individuals in interdependent social roles exhibited heightened self-esteem attunement to communal qualities such as kindness and understanding.
Conclusions:
- Self-esteem is dynamically attuned to traits relevant for social acceptance within specific social contexts.
- Social roles significantly moderate the relationship between self-esteem and trait-based self-perceptions.
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