Testing competence and acceptance explanations of self-esteem

Abstract

Recent theorizing suggests that both competence and acceptance contribute to global self-esteem. However, relatively little empirical work has focused on the relative contributions of competence and acceptance. We tested in four studies (N = 332) two competing hypotheses about how competence and acceptance play a role in self-esteem. According to the acceptance hypothesis, acceptance should influence self-esteem more than competence should. According to the competence/acceptance hypothesis, acceptance and competence should influence self-esteem roughly equally. The studies assessed state self-esteem in several ways: responses to feedback in an experimental setting (Studies 1 and 2), predicted changes in self-esteem in response to hypothetical events (Study 3), and recall of changes in self-esteem in retrospective accounts (Study 4). Overall, results supported the acceptance hypothesis: acceptance influenced self-esteem more than did competence.