The impact of collective self-esteem on intergroup evaluation: Self-protection and self-enhancement

The present study examines the impact of personal success or failure feedback on collective self-esteem and bias. The second corollary of the self-esteem hypothesis - that low or threatened self-esteem will motivate intergroup discrimination and Crocker and Luhtanen’s (1990) self-enhancement hypothesis were examined. Collective self-esteem was affected by status, and, contrary to the second corollary of the self-esteem hypothesis, participants with high collective self-esteem were found to show more ingroup bias (c.f. Abrams and Hogg 1988). However, status and self-esteem had interactive effects on evaluations of the ingroup and outgroup. High self-esteem was associated with more positive ingroup evaluations only when the ingroup had high status, whereas low self-esteem was associated with more positive outgroup evaluations only when the ingroup had low status. Results are discussed in terms of Crocker and Luhtanen’s (1990) self-enhancement hypothesis.