Self-esteem, self-presentation, and future Interaction: A dilemma of reputation

The influence of chronic self-esteem on self-presentation was explored. Male subjects were confronted with an experimentally created reputation, in the form of public (bogus) feedback from a personality assessment. High self-esteem subjects used compensatory self-enhancement in their self-descriptions and behaved in ways contrary to what their reputations would imply. Low self-esteem subjects did not employ compensatory self-enhancement. Moreover, the behavior of low self-esteem subjects conformed to the randomly generated feedback when it (the feedback) was public but not when it was confidential. The expectation of future interaction was shown to be a mediating variable.