Self-investment and self-esteem: Evidence for a Jamesian model of self-worth.

W. James (1890) argued that the importance people attach to their self-views determines the impact of these self-views on people's global feelings of self-worth. Despite the intuitive appeal of this position, most research on the relation between people's specific self-views and their global self-esteem has failed to support this assertion. B. W. Pelham and W. B. Swann (1989) provided evidence in support for W. James's assertion, but H. W. Marsh (1993) criticized this evidence. In this article, further evidence is presented for W. James's (1890) assertion. In addition, the favorability of people's specific self-views is identified as a moderator of the extent to which belief importance is related to self-esteem. The theoretical implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.