Extraversion as a Moderator of the Efficacy of Self-Esteem Maintenance Strategies

Four experiments explored how extraversion’s connection with self-esteem may depend on specific self-enhancement strategies. Participants’ self-esteem threatening feedback indicating that they had performed poorly on a vocabulary or emotional intelligence test. In Experiment 1, participants ( N = 80) were randomly assigned to either a control condition (no self-enhancement) or a downward social comparison condition. The procedures for Experiments 2 ( N = 470) and 3 ( N = 514) were similar, adding a self-serving attribution condition (Experiments 2 and 3) and Basking-in-Reflected-Glory (BIRG) condition (Experiment 3). Across the experiments, extraversion was more related to self-esteem under downward social comparison versus other conditions. BIRGing produced higher self-esteem in Experiment 3 across extraversion levels. Experiment 4 ( N = 355) focused on downward social comparison versus control, and provided evidence that an increased perception of being similar to the comparison targets may partially explain extraversion’s self-esteem link. Theoretical implications concerning both extraversion and self-enhancement are discussed.