Types of High Self-Esteem and Prejudice: How Implicit Self-Esteem Relates to Ethnic Discrimination Among High Explicit Self-Esteem Individuals.

There is increasing recognition that high self-esteem is heterogeneous. Recent research suggests that individuals who report having high self-esteem (i. e., have high explicit self-esteem) behave more defensively to the extent that they have relatively low implicit self-esteem. The current studies test whether individuals with high explicit self-esteem are more likely to discriminate ethnically, as a defensive technique, to the extent that they have relatively low implicit self-esteem. The results support this Prediction. Among participants with high explicit self-esteem, all of whom were threatened by negative performance feedback, those with relatively low implicit self-esteem recommended a more severe punishment for a Native, but not a White, student who started a fistfight. In Study 2, this pattern was not apparent for participants with relatively low explicit self-esteem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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