My Better Half

Abstract

People define themselves in terms of their relationship partners and they incorporate their partners into their self-concepts. Consequently, partner enhancement—viewing one’s partner in excessively positive terms—might constitute an indirect form of self-enhancement when feelings of self-worth are threatened. To test this hypothesis, the authors gave participants evaluative feedback (e.g., success and failure) and then asked them to appraise themselves, their current (or most recent) relationship partner and (in Study 2) most other people. The authors found that low self-esteem participants, but not high self-esteem participants, responded to failure by exaggerating the virtues of their romantic partners. These findings highlight the flexibility of self-enhancement strategies and provide further evidence that low self-esteem people pursue indirect forms of self-enhancement in their efforts to blunt the adverse impact of adverse feedback.