Self-evaluation as a function of self-esteem, performance feedback, and self-presentational role

People with high self-esteem (HSE) Versus low self-esteem (LSE) display different interpersonal styles, with HSEs being self-assertive and LSEs being self-protective. Consistent with this portrait, we found that HSEs and LSEs who received threatening trait feedback reacted differently after they were later induced to present themselves in a positive or negative fashion. In general, HSEs reacted to their own strategic self-presentations by enhancing or maintaining their self-evaluations while LSEs often reacted in a self-diminishing fashion by lowering their self-evaluations. Advantageous self-presentations (those in which a positive role appeared to be self-representative or a negative role appeared to be unrepresentative) had the greatest impact on self-evaluations, producing the greatest increases in self-regard for HSEs and, paradoxically, decreases in self-regard for LSEs.