themselves poorly on their social skills after discovering they had failed the
achievement test. However, high self-esteem participants actually rated them-selves higher on their social attributes after failing.
These results demonstrate one tactic high self-esteem people use to main-
tain their feelings of high self-worth even in the face of negative feedback.When told they did not do well on one task, they simply remind themselves
of how well they do in other areas. In another study high self-esteem people
quickly abandoned a task they were having trouble with when given an op-portunity to work on something they could do well (Di Paula & Campbell,
2002). It ’s not that high self-esteem people think they ’re perfect; they just
don’t dwell on their failures. If they mess up at work, they might remind
themselves that they have a lot of friends. If they lose badly at handball, theymight recall how well they play chess. This strategy keeps high self-esteem
people feeling good about themselves even when faced with life ’s inevitable
downturns.
Contingencies of Self-Worth
To this point, we’ ve concentrated on what researchers refer to as global self-
esteem; that is, the overall evaluation we have about ourselves. But very fewpeople feel entirely good or bad about themselves. Even the most contentamong us can point to deficiencies and weaknesses, areas where we feel less
confident than others. Thus researchers sometimes find it useful to examine
self-esteem within specific domains. For example, investigators might ask par-ticipants how they feel about themselves in terms of academic performance,
personal ethics, or physical appearance. This strategy raises some interesting
questions. Is global self-esteem simply the sum of how we feel about ourselvesin these specific areas? Is high self-esteem restricted to those who feel good
about themselves in most, if not all, major domains? Put another way, is it
necessary to feel competent and virtuous in many different areas before wecan feel good about who we are?
Fortunately, the answer to all of these questions is “No.” Researchers
find that global self-esteem seems to result from a two-step process (Crocker,
Brook, Niiya, & Villacorta, 2006; Crocker & Park, 2003; Crocker & Wolfe,
2001). First, each of us identifies domains that we consider important to
us; that is, areas we use to determine our self-worth. For one person these
domains might be academic performance and acting in ethically sound
ways. For someone else physical appearance and acceptance from family and
friends might be most important. Researchers refer to these areas we use to
evaluate ourselves as contingencies of self-worth . Second, we form evalua-
tions of ourselves —that is, our global self-esteem —based on how we do in
these selected areas. The woman who bases her self-esteem on academic per-formance will feel good about who she is as long as she performs well in
class. The man whose contingencies of self-worth include his physical appear-
ance will enjoy high self-esteem as long as he receives feedback that he is
good-looking and desirable.
Looking at self-esteem in terms of contingencies of self-worth helps us
understand why people with limitations and deficiencies can still feel good328 CHAPTER 12 The Humanistic Approach