Abstract

We assume that people have beliefs about their abilities, that these generate self-esteem, and that self-esteem is valued intrinsically. We consider the implications for an individual's incentive to manage their self-esteem in the labour market. Employing a model of labour market search with Bayesian updating, we show that a self-esteem sensitive individual has an incentive to avoid the situation (in avoiding the truth), self-handicap (in avoiding the truth without avoiding search), to employ downward comparison (in manipulating the truth), and engage in defensive pessimism (in avoiding materially damaging strategies like self-handicapping).

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