Leary - 1 The Interpersonal Basis of Self-Esteem: Death, Devaluation, or Deference? Mark R. Leary, Wake Forest University I wish to thank Catherine Cottrell, Jennifer Saltzman, Richard Bednarski, and Misha Phillips for their work on the unpublished research that is described in this chapter.
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Leary - 1
The Interpersonal Basis of Self-Esteem:
Death, Devaluation, or Deference?
Mark R. Leary, Wake Forest University
I wish to thank Catherine Cottrell, Jennifer Saltzman, Richard Bednarski, and Misha
Phillips for their work on the unpublished research that is described in this chapter.
Leary - 2
The Interpersonal Basis of Self-Esteem: Death, Devaluation, or Deference?
Theorists have recognized for many years that self-esteem is strongly affected by how
people believe they are perceived and evaluated by others (Cooley, 1902; James, 1890), but the
reasons for this link between interpersonal appraisals and self-esteem has been a matter of
debate. In part, the controversy stems from the fact that self-esteem has traditionally been
conceptualized a personal self-evaluation, making it difficult to explain precisely why people’s
private self-views should be heavily influenced by what other people think.
For example, James’ (1890) well-known formula describing self-esteem as the ratio of
one’s successes to one’s pretensions conceptualizes self-esteem is an individual’s internal
assessment of how well one is doing. When self-esteem attracted the attention of humanistic
psychologists in the middle of the 20th century, self-esteem became tied to inner authenticity. For
example, Rogers (1959) proposed that true self-esteem arises when people live congruently with
their deepest “organismic”values. This view was echoed more recently by Deci and Ryan (1985)
who distinguished between true self-esteem (which arises when people behave autonomously in
ways that are consistent with their intrinsic or core self) and contingent self-esteem (which
depends on the person meeting certain standards or expectations). Bednar, Wells, and Peterson
(1989) offered a similar perspective when they suggested that true self-esteem result when
people cope effectively with psychological threats and does not fundamentally depend on
approbation from others. These and other intrapersonal perspectives do not deny that self-esteem
is sometimes affected by other people’s evaluations of the individual but view the effects of
interpersonal evaluations on self-esteem as reflecting either a secondary source of self-evaluative
information or an unhealthy reliance on the approval of other people.
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In contrast to these intrapersonal perspectives, other theorists have conceptualized self-
esteem in interpersonal terms, arguing that the self is an inherently social construction that arises
in the context of interpersonal relations (Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934). If we begin with the
assumption that the self is inherently social, it is then easy to explain why people’s feelings
about themselves are strongly related to how they believe others evaluate them.
Theorists have conceptualized the interpersonal nature of self-esteem in a variety of
ways, three of which are the focus of this chapter. Specifically, this chapter offers critical
reviews of three interpersonal perspectives on self-esteem–terror management theory, sociometer
theory, and dominance theory. A brief overview of each theory will be offered, existing
evidence reviewed, and new, often unpublished data relevant to each theory presented. The
chapter will conclude with an attempt to integrate the insights of these three perspectives
regarding the interpersonal nature of self-esteem.
Terror Management Theory
Terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Solomon,
Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991) offers an intriguing, albeit controversial perspective on self-
esteem based on the work of Becker (1971, 1973). According to the theory, the continual
possibility of experiencing painful and tragic events (death being the ultimate such occurrence)
is a constant source of anxiety. To minimize the perpetual terror that results from awareness of
one's fragility and mortality in a dangerous and unpredictable world, people adopt views of
themselves and of the world that attenuate their fears.
Central to this anxiety-buffering process are individuals’ beliefs that they meet the social
standards by which people are judged to be worthwhile and valuable. All cultures specify what it
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means to be a "good" person and promise either symbolic or literal immortality to those who
meet standards of goodness. During development, children learn to associate meeting cultural
standards with parental support, thereby establishing a link between living up to cultural
standards (and the accompanying experience of self-esteem) and a sense of personal security.
Self-esteem has an interpersonal basis, according to TMT, because social approval typically
reflects the degree to which one is meeting cultural standards.
Studies have supported many key predictions of TMT, particularly the notion that people
endorse cultural standards more strongly when death is made salient. Because cultural standards
provide the basis for self-esteem and felt security, people punish those who violate such
standards when mortality is salient (Greenberg et al., 1990; Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski,
Solomon, & Chatel, 1992; Rosenblatt et al., 1989). Furthermore, evidence supports the
proposition that events that raise self-esteem lower anxiety not only about death but about other
threatening events as well (Greenberg et al., 1992).
Self-Esteem and Anxiety About Death
One untested implication of TMT is that people with low trait self-esteem should be
more anxious about death than people with high self-esteem. People with high self-esteem
should presumably be buffered against fear of death because meeting cultural standards (and the
consequent feelings of self-esteem) are associated with security. In contrast, people with low
self-esteem should worry more about death because they are less likely to believe they have met
the cultural standards that promise safety, if not immortality.
This prediction stands in contrast to an equally plausible position, however, namely that
people with low self-esteem are less afraid of dying than those with high self-esteem. Research
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shows that low self-esteem and self-blame are risk factors for suicide (Maris, 1981; Neuringer,
1974), suggesting that people with low self-esteem may be less worried about dying than people
who value themselves highly. One should be more worried about losing something the more
valued it is, and this should be true whether it is a personal possession or one's own life. One
study that examined the relationship between self-esteem and fear of death found none (Feifel &
Nagy, 1981), which led us to explore the relationship between self-esteem and fear of death
more closely.
Participants completed the Revised Death Anxiety Scale (RDAS; Thorson & Powell,
1992), which assesses four sources of death anxiety: no longer existing, helplessness, concerns
about what happens after death, and pain. They also completed two measures of trait self-esteem
– the self-regard subscale of the Self-Rating Scale (Fleming & Courtney, 1984) and the self-
feelings adjectives identified by McFarland and Ross (1982) (e.g., competent, inadequate,
confident, worthless)–and a measure of anxiety.
Table 1 presents correlations between the two self-esteem measures and the four
subscales of the RDAS. As can be seen, both of the self-esteem measures correlated weakly with
fears involving loss of control and pain, and with the total RDAS score. In addition, the self-
regard scale correlated weakly with concerns about what will happen after death.
Because research shows that trait self-esteem is related to anxiety (Barlow, 1988), these
correlations may be due to participants' anxiety rather than their self-esteem. To test this
possibility, partial correlations were calculated between the two self-esteem measures and the
RDAS scores while controlling for anxiety. All partial correlations were nonsignificant (-.14 < rs
< .11). In contrast, when self-esteem was partialed out of the relationship between anxiety and
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death-related fears, all correlations were statistically significant, rs > .17. The partial correlations
suggest that the correlations between self-esteem and death anxiety may be an artifact of the
relationship between self-esteem and anxiety. Persons low in self-esteem worry more about
nearly everything, including death.
Although trait self-esteem was negatively related to certain sources of death anxiety (as
TMT predicts), self-esteem was not related to fears about nonexistence which TMT suggests
should show the strongest relationship to self-esteem. As Solomon et al. (1986) stated,
"whenever we refer to the terror of death, we do not mean the intense fear of death per se, but
rather of death as absolute annihilation" (p. 96, italics in original). Yet, no relationship between
self-esteem and fear of nonexistence was found.
Self-Esteem and Domains of Death Anxiety
Although the RDAS has demonstrated reliability and validity as a measure of death
anxiety (Thorsen & Powell, 1992), we wondered whether its subscales tap all of the major
reasons that people fear death. For example, many people fear dying because they are distressed
about leaving loved ones or about the bereavement of those they leave behind (Fiefel & Nagy,
1981), but the RDAS does not include interpersonal concerns such as these. If the relationship
between self-esteem and death anxiety is mediated by fears not included on the RDAS, we might
not detect the correlation that TMT predicts.
To broadly sample fears about death, 76 undergraduate students were asked to write
down the primary reason they were bothered by thoughts of their own deaths. Two researchers
sorted respondents' answers, identifying six distinct categories of death-related fears: uncertainty
about what will happen after death, separation from loved ones, unfulfilled goals, the distress of
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other people, nonexistence, and painful dying. A questionnaire based on these categories was
then administered to122 participants, who rated the degree to which each of the six factors
bother them when they think about their own death: (a) uncertainty about what, if anything, will
happen to you after you die, (b) being separated from the friends and family you leave behind,
(c) the things you haven't done and the goals you haven't reached, (d) how upset and distressed
other people will feel about your death, (e) the fact that you will no longer exist, and (f) the pain
you may experience while dying. Participants also rated how they generally feel about
themselves on self-feelings and anxiety items (McFarland & Ross, 1982), and completed the
self-regard subscale of the Self-Rating Scale (Fleming & Courtney, 1984).
Correlations between self-esteem and fears of death are shown in Table 2. Self-esteem
was consistently related only to concerns regarding uncertainty about what will happen after
death. Neither self-esteem measure correlated with concerns about nonexistence--the aspect of
death specifically implicated by TMT. Overall, the multiple correlation between each of the
measures of self-esteem and the set of six death fears was only .18 for self-feelings and .22 for
self-regard. Clearly, trait self-esteem accounts for relatively little variance in death anxiety.
Because the measures of self-esteem correlated with anxiety (-.58 < rs < -.70), we again
calculated the partial correlation between each self-esteem measure and the six facets of death
anxiety while partialing out general anxiety scores. With anxiety removed, none of the
correlations in Table 2 remained statistically significant. In contrast, removing self-esteem had
virtually no effect on the magnitude of the correlations between anxiety and fear of uncertainty.
As in the earlier study, self-esteem showed only weak relationships to fears of death, and partial
correlations suggested that these relationships were attributable to anxiety rather than self-esteem
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per se.
Trait Self-Esteem and Reactions to Mortality Salience
TMT suggests that high self-esteem people should be less affected by thinking about
death than low self-esteem people because self-esteem buffers them against death-related
anxiety. To test this prediction, Participants completed two measures of trait self-esteem, then
reported to an experiment several weeks later, where they were randomly assigned to write one
of three essays. In the mortality-salient condition, participants were instructed to write an essay
about their own death, imagining "what it will be like when you die. Think about how you will
feel, what you will think, what you will experience as you are dying." In the rejection-salient
condition, participants were asked to write about being rejected by someone they care about:
"Imagine what it will be like to be rejected by a romantic partner, close friend, or family
member, or ostracized by a group." Participants in the control condition wrote about what it will
be like to retire after many years of working. After writing the essay, participants rated their
anxiety on eight scales (e.g., worried, insecure, safe, secure).
The participants' anxiety ratings were analyzed with hierarchical multiple regression
analyses that used essay condition (dummy-coded), pretest self-esteem scores, and their
interaction as predictors. Both of the self-esteem measures yielded identical results–a significant
main effect of self-esteem (showing that self-esteem predicted anxiety) and a nearly-significant
(p < .06) interaction of essay condition by self-esteem. The nature of this interaction can be seen
by examining the correlations between self-esteem and anxiety separately for each essay
condition in Table 3. Scores on the self-esteem measures were not significantly correlated with
anxiety when participants wrote about death or retirement. However, self-esteem scores and
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anxiety were inversely correlated (rs > -.73) when participants wrote about rejection, suggesting
that trait self-esteem moderated reactions to imagined rejection, a finding consistent with the
idea that self-esteem monitors social acceptance and rejection (Leary & Downs, 1995). Although
it is possible that the experimental manipulation was not strong enough to induce anxiety about
death, the essay-writing paradigm has demonstrated terror-management effects in many previous
studies (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1990). Furthermore, parallel instructions to write about rejection
had different effects depending on participants' self-esteem.
Self-Esteem and Death Concerns After Ego-Threat
The results of the three studies just described showed a negligible relationship between
self-esteem and fear of death. Furthermore, when correlations were obtained, they tended to
involve uncertainty or coping rather than fears of nonexistence, and were mediated by anxiety.
If high self-esteem buffers people against death-related anxiety, events that threaten self-
esteem should increase concerns about death (because the esteem-based anxiety buffer is
compromised), whereas events that increase self-esteem should lower them. Along these lines,
Greenberg et al. (1992) found that participants who received positive feedback about themselves
expressed less anxiety about watching a videotape of death-related scenes (such an autopsy and
an electrocution) than participants who received neutral feedback.
In a study that examined this hypothesis using a real threat to self-esteem, 122 students
were tested on the day that they received grades on a midterm exam in a psychology course.
After the instructor distributed students’ scored tests, a questionnaire booklet was distributed.
Participants were led to imagine vividly two positive and two negative events: their own death,
graduating from college, rejection by another person, and receiving an honor or award. (The
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order of these four situations was counterbalanced.) After imagining each situation, participants
rated how the hypothetical situation made them feel. Participants also indicated the score they
had expected to obtain on the exam and the minimum score with which they would have been
satisfied, and rated their state self-esteem.
Correlations between self-esteem and feelings after imagining death, rejection, and
graduation were all nonsignificant (-.08 < rs < -.11). Only feelings about being honored
correlated with self-esteem, r = -.20, p < .05. (Perhaps persons with higher self-esteem are more
accustomed to being honored and, thus, experience less positive affect in such situations.) Again,
no support was obtained for a link between self-esteem and death-related anxiety.
To test the possibility that self-esteem and feelings about death are related only in the
face of an esteem-threatening event, two indices of success vs. failure were calculated. One
involved the difference between the score participants expected on the exam and the score they
obtained, and the other involved the difference between the minimum score with which
participants would have been satisfied and the score they earned. In both cases, a positive
difference reflected subjective failure, whereas a negative difference indicated subjective
success. Both indices correlated highly with self-feelings (r = -.39 with the expected-obtained
difference; r = -.60 with minimum-obtained difference), but neither index of subjective success-
failure correlated with anxiety after imagining one’s death. Thus, this study obtained no
evidence of a link between self-esteem and feelings about death either in general or after
contemplating one's own death, and subjective failure on the test was unrelated to death anxiety.
Summary and Critique
Taken together, these four studies provide little support for a relationship between self-
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esteem and fear of death. A few negative correlations between self-esteem and death-related
anxiety were obtained, but the effects involved fears stemming from uncertainty, loss of control,
and pain rather than from death per se. Furthermore, the magnitude of the relationships were
small, and analyses suggested that they were mediated by anxiety. In brief, the failure to obtain
notable negative correlations between self-esteem and anxiety about death fails to support the
hypothesis that high self-esteem buffers people against fears of death. Although each of the
studies reported here has potential limitations, the failure to detect the predicted effect across
four different studies using different methods and measures provides converging evidence that
high self-esteem neither attenuates nor increases the fear of dying. Furthermore, the fact that all
studies showed self-esteem to be related to other measures makes it unlikely that the null
findings resulted from problems with the methods or measures used. It is also noteworthy that
other research has failed to support the prediction that thinking about mortality leads people to
bolster their self-esteem (Sowards, Moniz, & Harris, 1991). I wish to stress that these data are
relevant only to the self-esteem hypothesis of TMT and do not in any way disconfirm other
aspects of the theory. As noted, considerable research has supported the effects of mortality
salience on judgments of people who violate cultural standards.