Increased Self-Evaluation as a Function of Ambiguous Evaluations by Referent Others

Abstract

The hypothesis that the greater the ambiguity (or variance) in evaluations by referent others, the more the self-esteem motive enhances the person's self-evaluation, is tested and supported. Where the variance in evaluations by peer group members is low: (a) the correspondence between self-evaluation and the mean of others' evaluations is strong, and (b) both self-evaluation and peer evaluations tend to be lower. Where the variance in others' evaluations is high: (a) the correspondence between self-evaluation and others' evaluations is weaker, and (b) while self-evaluation tends to be higher than the mean of others' evaluations, both self-evaluation scores and peer evaluation scores are higher. Further evidence that ambiguity provides opportunity for enhancing self-evaluation is shown by the relationships between discrepancies from aspirations and rankings of the importance of different dimensions to self-evaluation.