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The Interpersonal Basis of Self-Esteem:

Death, Devaluation, or Deference?

Mark R. Leary, Wake Forest University

I wish to thank Catherine Cottrell, Jennifer Saltzman, Richard Bednarski, and Misha

Phillips for their work on the unpublished research that is described in this chapter.

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The Interpersonal Basis of Self-Esteem: Death, Devaluation, or Deference?

Theorists have recognized for many years that self-esteem is strongly affected by how

people believe they are perceived and evaluated by others (Cooley, 1902; James, 1890), but the

reasons for this link between interpersonal appraisals and self-esteem has been a matter of

debate. In part, the controversy stems from the fact that self-esteem has traditionally been

conceptualized a personal self-evaluation, making it difficult to explain precisely why people’s

private self-views should be heavily influenced by what other people think.

For example, James’ (1890) well-known formula describing self-esteem as the ratio of

one’s successes to one’s pretensions conceptualizes self-esteem is an individual’s internal

assessment of how well one is doing. When self-esteem attracted the attention of humanistic

psychologists in the middle of the 20th century, self-esteem became tied to inner authenticity. For

example, Rogers (1959) proposed that true self-esteem arises when people live congruently with

their deepest “organismic”values. This view was echoed more recently by Deci and Ryan (1985)

who distinguished between true self-esteem (which arises when people behave autonomously in

ways that are consistent with their intrinsic or core self) and contingent self-esteem (which

depends on the person meeting certain standards or expectations). Bednar, Wells, and Peterson

(1989) offered a similar perspective when they suggested that true self-esteem result when

people cope effectively with psychological threats and does not fundamentally depend on

approbation from others. These and other intrapersonal perspectives do not deny that self-esteem

is sometimes affected by other people’s evaluations of the individual but view the effects of

interpersonal evaluations on self-esteem as reflecting either a secondary source of self-evaluative

information or an unhealthy reliance on the approval of other people.

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In contrast to these intrapersonal perspectives, other theorists have conceptualized self-

esteem in interpersonal terms, arguing that the self is an inherently social construction that arises

in the context of interpersonal relations (Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934). If we begin with the

assumption that the self is inherently social, it is then easy to explain why people’s feelings

about themselves are strongly related to how they believe others evaluate them.

Theorists have conceptualized the interpersonal nature of self-esteem in a variety of

ways, three of which are the focus of this chapter. Specifically, this chapter offers critical

reviews of three interpersonal perspectives on self-esteem–terror management theory, sociometer

theory, and dominance theory. A brief overview of each theory will be offered, existing

evidence reviewed, and new, often unpublished data relevant to each theory presented. The

chapter will conclude with an attempt to integrate the insights of these three perspectives

regarding the interpersonal nature of self-esteem.

Terror Management Theory

Terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; Solomon,

Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 1991) offers an intriguing, albeit controversial perspective on self-

esteem based on the work of Becker (1971, 1973). According to the theory, the continual

possibility of experiencing painful and tragic events (death being the ultimate such occurrence)

is a constant source of anxiety. To minimize the perpetual terror that results from awareness of

one's fragility and mortality in a dangerous and unpredictable world, people adopt views of

themselves and of the world that attenuate their fears.

Central to this anxiety-buffering process are individuals’ beliefs that they meet the social

standards by which people are judged to be worthwhile and valuable. All cultures specify what it

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means to be a "good" person and promise either symbolic or literal immortality to those who

meet standards of goodness. During development, children learn to associate meeting cultural

standards with parental support, thereby establishing a link between living up to cultural

standards (and the accompanying experience of self-esteem) and a sense of personal security.

Self-esteem has an interpersonal basis, according to TMT, because social approval typically

reflects the degree to which one is meeting cultural standards.

Studies have supported many key predictions of TMT, particularly the notion that people

endorse cultural standards more strongly when death is made salient. Because cultural standards

provide the basis for self-esteem and felt security, people punish those who violate such

standards when mortality is salient (Greenberg et al., 1990; Greenberg, Simon, Pyszczynski,

Solomon, & Chatel, 1992; Rosenblatt et al., 1989). Furthermore, evidence supports the

proposition that events that raise self-esteem lower anxiety not only about death but about other

threatening events as well (Greenberg et al., 1992).

Self-Esteem and Anxiety About Death

One untested implication of TMT is that people with low trait self-esteem should be

more anxious about death than people with high self-esteem. People with high self-esteem

should presumably be buffered against fear of death because meeting cultural standards (and the

consequent feelings of self-esteem) are associated with security. In contrast, people with low

self-esteem should worry more about death because they are less likely to believe they have met

the cultural standards that promise safety, if not immortality.

This prediction stands in contrast to an equally plausible position, however, namely that

people with low self-esteem are less afraid of dying than those with high self-esteem. Research

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shows that low self-esteem and self-blame are risk factors for suicide (Maris, 1981; Neuringer,

1974), suggesting that people with low self-esteem may be less worried about dying than people

who value themselves highly. One should be more worried about losing something the more

valued it is, and this should be true whether it is a personal possession or one's own life. One

study that examined the relationship between self-esteem and fear of death found none (Feifel &

Nagy, 1981), which led us to explore the relationship between self-esteem and fear of death

more closely.

Participants completed the Revised Death Anxiety Scale (RDAS; Thorson & Powell,

1992), which assesses four sources of death anxiety: no longer existing, helplessness, concerns

about what happens after death, and pain. They also completed two measures of trait self-esteem

– the self-regard subscale of the Self-Rating Scale (Fleming & Courtney, 1984) and the self-

feelings adjectives identified by McFarland and Ross (1982) (e.g., competent, inadequate,

confident, worthless)–and a measure of anxiety.

Table 1 presents correlations between the two self-esteem measures and the four

subscales of the RDAS. As can be seen, both of the self-esteem measures correlated weakly with

fears involving loss of control and pain, and with the total RDAS score. In addition, the self-

regard scale correlated weakly with concerns about what will happen after death.

Because research shows that trait self-esteem is related to anxiety (Barlow, 1988), these

correlations may be due to participants' anxiety rather than their self-esteem. To test this

possibility, partial correlations were calculated between the two self-esteem measures and the

RDAS scores while controlling for anxiety. All partial correlations were nonsignificant (-.14 < rs

< .11). In contrast, when self-esteem was partialed out of the relationship between anxiety and

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death-related fears, all correlations were statistically significant, rs > .17. The partial correlations

suggest that the correlations between self-esteem and death anxiety may be an artifact of the

relationship between self-esteem and anxiety. Persons low in self-esteem worry more about

nearly everything, including death.

Although trait self-esteem was negatively related to certain sources of death anxiety (as

TMT predicts), self-esteem was not related to fears about nonexistence which TMT suggests

should show the strongest relationship to self-esteem. As Solomon et al. (1986) stated,

"whenever we refer to the terror of death, we do not mean the intense fear of death per se, but

rather of death as absolute annihilation" (p. 96, italics in original). Yet, no relationship between

self-esteem and fear of nonexistence was found.

Self-Esteem and Domains of Death Anxiety

Although the RDAS has demonstrated reliability and validity as a measure of death

anxiety (Thorsen & Powell, 1992), we wondered whether its subscales tap all of the major

reasons that people fear death. For example, many people fear dying because they are distressed

about leaving loved ones or about the bereavement of those they leave behind (Fiefel & Nagy,

1981), but the RDAS does not include interpersonal concerns such as these. If the relationship

between self-esteem and death anxiety is mediated by fears not included on the RDAS, we might

not detect the correlation that TMT predicts.

To broadly sample fears about death, 76 undergraduate students were asked to write

down the primary reason they were bothered by thoughts of their own deaths. Two researchers

sorted respondents' answers, identifying six distinct categories of death-related fears: uncertainty

about what will happen after death, separation from loved ones, unfulfilled goals, the distress of

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other people, nonexistence, and painful dying. A questionnaire based on these categories was

then administered to122 participants, who rated the degree to which each of the six factors

bother them when they think about their own death: (a) uncertainty about what, if anything, will

happen to you after you die, (b) being separated from the friends and family you leave behind,

(c) the things you haven't done and the goals you haven't reached, (d) how upset and distressed

other people will feel about your death, (e) the fact that you will no longer exist, and (f) the pain

you may experience while dying. Participants also rated how they generally feel about

themselves on self-feelings and anxiety items (McFarland & Ross, 1982), and completed the

self-regard subscale of the Self-Rating Scale (Fleming & Courtney, 1984).

Correlations between self-esteem and fears of death are shown in Table 2. Self-esteem

was consistently related only to concerns regarding uncertainty about what will happen after

death. Neither self-esteem measure correlated with concerns about nonexistence--the aspect of

death specifically implicated by TMT. Overall, the multiple correlation between each of the

measures of self-esteem and the set of six death fears was only .18 for self-feelings and .22 for

self-regard. Clearly, trait self-esteem accounts for relatively little variance in death anxiety.

Because the measures of self-esteem correlated with anxiety (-.58 < rs < -.70), we again

calculated the partial correlation between each self-esteem measure and the six facets of death

anxiety while partialing out general anxiety scores. With anxiety removed, none of the

correlations in Table 2 remained statistically significant. In contrast, removing self-esteem had

virtually no effect on the magnitude of the correlations between anxiety and fear of uncertainty.

As in the earlier study, self-esteem showed only weak relationships to fears of death, and partial

correlations suggested that these relationships were attributable to anxiety rather than self-esteem

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per se.

Trait Self-Esteem and Reactions to Mortality Salience

TMT suggests that high self-esteem people should be less affected by thinking about

death than low self-esteem people because self-esteem buffers them against death-related

anxiety. To test this prediction, Participants completed two measures of trait self-esteem, then

reported to an experiment several weeks later, where they were randomly assigned to write one

of three essays. In the mortality-salient condition, participants were instructed to write an essay

about their own death, imagining "what it will be like when you die. Think about how you will

feel, what you will think, what you will experience as you are dying." In the rejection-salient

condition, participants were asked to write about being rejected by someone they care about:

"Imagine what it will be like to be rejected by a romantic partner, close friend, or family

member, or ostracized by a group." Participants in the control condition wrote about what it will

be like to retire after many years of working. After writing the essay, participants rated their

anxiety on eight scales (e.g., worried, insecure, safe, secure).

The participants' anxiety ratings were analyzed with hierarchical multiple regression

analyses that used essay condition (dummy-coded), pretest self-esteem scores, and their

interaction as predictors. Both of the self-esteem measures yielded identical results–a significant

main effect of self-esteem (showing that self-esteem predicted anxiety) and a nearly-significant

(p < .06) interaction of essay condition by self-esteem. The nature of this interaction can be seen

by examining the correlations between self-esteem and anxiety separately for each essay

condition in Table 3. Scores on the self-esteem measures were not significantly correlated with

anxiety when participants wrote about death or retirement. However, self-esteem scores and

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anxiety were inversely correlated (rs > -.73) when participants wrote about rejection, suggesting

that trait self-esteem moderated reactions to imagined rejection, a finding consistent with the

idea that self-esteem monitors social acceptance and rejection (Leary & Downs, 1995). Although

it is possible that the experimental manipulation was not strong enough to induce anxiety about

death, the essay-writing paradigm has demonstrated terror-management effects in many previous

studies (e.g., Greenberg et al., 1990). Furthermore, parallel instructions to write about rejection

had different effects depending on participants' self-esteem.

Self-Esteem and Death Concerns After Ego-Threat

The results of the three studies just described showed a negligible relationship between

self-esteem and fear of death. Furthermore, when correlations were obtained, they tended to

involve uncertainty or coping rather than fears of nonexistence, and were mediated by anxiety.

If high self-esteem buffers people against death-related anxiety, events that threaten self-

esteem should increase concerns about death (because the esteem-based anxiety buffer is

compromised), whereas events that increase self-esteem should lower them. Along these lines,

Greenberg et al. (1992) found that participants who received positive feedback about themselves

expressed less anxiety about watching a videotape of death-related scenes (such an autopsy and

an electrocution) than participants who received neutral feedback.

In a study that examined this hypothesis using a real threat to self-esteem, 122 students

were tested on the day that they received grades on a midterm exam in a psychology course.

After the instructor distributed students’ scored tests, a questionnaire booklet was distributed.

Participants were led to imagine vividly two positive and two negative events: their own death,

graduating from college, rejection by another person, and receiving an honor or award. (The

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order of these four situations was counterbalanced.) After imagining each situation, participants

rated how the hypothetical situation made them feel. Participants also indicated the score they

had expected to obtain on the exam and the minimum score with which they would have been

satisfied, and rated their state self-esteem.

Correlations between self-esteem and feelings after imagining death, rejection, and

graduation were all nonsignificant (-.08 < rs < -.11). Only feelings about being honored

correlated with self-esteem, r = -.20, p < .05. (Perhaps persons with higher self-esteem are more

accustomed to being honored and, thus, experience less positive affect in such situations.) Again,

no support was obtained for a link between self-esteem and death-related anxiety.

To test the possibility that self-esteem and feelings about death are related only in the

face of an esteem-threatening event, two indices of success vs. failure were calculated. One

involved the difference between the score participants expected on the exam and the score they

obtained, and the other involved the difference between the minimum score with which

participants would have been satisfied and the score they earned. In both cases, a positive

difference reflected subjective failure, whereas a negative difference indicated subjective

success. Both indices correlated highly with self-feelings (r = -.39 with the expected-obtained

difference; r = -.60 with minimum-obtained difference), but neither index of subjective success-

failure correlated with anxiety after imagining one’s death. Thus, this study obtained no

evidence of a link between self-esteem and feelings about death either in general or after

contemplating one's own death, and subjective failure on the test was unrelated to death anxiety.

Summary and Critique

Taken together, these four studies provide little support for a relationship between self-

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esteem and fear of death. A few negative correlations between self-esteem and death-related

anxiety were obtained, but the effects involved fears stemming from uncertainty, loss of control,

and pain rather than from death per se. Furthermore, the magnitude of the relationships were

small, and analyses suggested that they were mediated by anxiety. In brief, the failure to obtain

notable negative correlations between self-esteem and anxiety about death fails to support the

hypothesis that high self-esteem buffers people against fears of death. Although each of the

studies reported here has potential limitations, the failure to detect the predicted effect across

four different studies using different methods and measures provides converging evidence that

high self-esteem neither attenuates nor increases the fear of dying. Furthermore, the fact that all

studies showed self-esteem to be related to other measures makes it unlikely that the null

findings resulted from problems with the methods or measures used. It is also noteworthy that

other research has failed to support the prediction that thinking about mortality leads people to

bolster their self-esteem (Sowards, Moniz, & Harris, 1991). I wish to stress that these data are

relevant only to the self-esteem hypothesis of TMT and do not in any way disconfirm other

aspects of the theory. As noted, considerable research has supported the effects of mortality

salience on judgments of people who violate cultural standards.

Sociometer Theory

Sociometer theory (Leary, 1999; Leary & Baumeister, 2000; Leary & Downs, 1995)

offers an alternative interpersonal explanation of self-esteem, proposing that self-esteem

responds to others’ evaluations because the self-esteem system evolved to monitor the degree to

which other people accept vs. reject the individual. According to sociometer theory, the system

monitors the social environment for cues indicating low or declining relational evaluation (e.g.,

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disinterest, dislike, rejection) and warns the individual via lowered self-esteem when such cues

are detected. Thus, events that lower self-esteem do so because they indicate low or declining

acceptance. Furthermore, the theory suggests that people are not motivated to increase their self-

esteem per se as has been typically assumed, but rather seek to increase their relational value and

social acceptance. Self-esteem is simply the meter they use to gauge their success in doing so.

A great deal of existing research is consistent with sociometer theory. For example, self-

esteem responds strongly to social acceptance and rejection, public events affect self-esteem

more strongly than private events (presumably because public events have greater implications

for acceptance and rejection), the primary dimensions of self-esteem reflect attributes that are

relevant to one’s relational value, the importance people place on various dimensions of self-

esteem is based on the importance that significant others place on them, and individual

differences in self-esteem are related to the degree to which people believe that they are accepted

vs. rejected by other people (for a review, see Leary & Baumeister, 2000).

Acceptance, Rejection, and State Self-Esteem

Our own research shows that individuals’ feelings about themselves vary systematically

as a function of even minor changes in other people’s appraisals of them. Leary, Tambor,

Terdal, and Downs (1995, Study 3) gave participants bogus feedback indicating that they were

either included or excluded as members of a laboratory group and that their membership was

based either on a random selection or a vote of the other group members. Participants who

thought they were excluded on the basis of a group vote subsequently showed notably lower

state self-esteem than the other conditions. A second study (Leary et al., 1995, Study 4)

conceptually replicated this finding by showing that participants who believed that another

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individual was ambivalent about interacting with them had lower state self-esteem than those

who thought the other person wanted to interact with them.

Leary, Haupt, Strausser, and Chokel (1998, Study 4) provided participants with ongoing

bogus feedback from another individual and measured state self-esteem “on line” by having

participants move a computer mouse to indicate how they were feeling about themselves in real

time. State self-esteem increased as a function of feedback that connoted social acceptance and

declined as a function of feedback that connoted rejection. In fact, 77% of the reliable variance

in state self-esteem could be accounted for by the degree to which the interpersonal feedback

connoted acceptance vs. rejection. Interestingly, the relationship between rejection-acceptance

feedback and state self-esteem was not strictly linear, taking an ogival function that flattened at

the bottom and top of the curve. This ogival pattern, which was replicated in three other studies

(Leary et al., 1998), suggests that self-esteem is most responsive to acceptance-rejection

feedback in the middle range and less so at the extremes.

In another study (Leary et al., 1995, Study 2), participants wrote essays about a recent

occasion on which they felt accepted or rejected, then answered questions regarding how

excluded they felt in the situation and how they had felt about themselves at the time. Results

showed that the more excluded that participants felt in the situation, the worse they felt about

themselves. Ratings of perceived exclusion correlated very highly (between -.68 and -.92,

depending on condition) with state self-esteem.

Esteem-Threatening Events

From the standpoint of sociometer theory, events that threaten self-esteem have their

effects not because they challenge self-esteem per se but rather because they raise the specter of

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relational devaluation and rejection. Leary et al. (1995, Study 1) provided direct evidence that

events that lower self-esteem are those that people assume might lead others to reject them.

Participants were given a list of behaviors that varied in social desirability, such as “I donated

blood,” “I lost my temper,” and “I cheated on my boyfriend or girlfriend.” They went through

the list once and indicated how they thought other people would react toward them if they

performed each behavior (1 = many people would reject or avoid me; 5 = many people would

accept or include me). Later, they went through the list again and indicated on bipolar adjective

scales how they would personally feel about themselves (e.g., good-bad, valuable-worthless) if

they performed each behavior. The canonical correlation between participants’ ratings of others’

reactions vis-a-vis inclusion-exclusion and their own feelings about themselves was .70, and the

order of the two sets of ratings was virtually identical. These data suggest that how people feel

about themselves (i.e., their state self-esteem) after behaving in particular ways is a function of

how they think others will react.

Individual Differences in Trait Self-Esteem

Sociometer theory predicts that individual differences in trait self-esteem should be

predicted by how accepted people generally feel they are (Leary & Baumeister, 2000). In

essence, trait self-esteem may be conceptualized as the resting position of the sociometer in the

absence of explicit social feedback. In support of this idea, Leary et al. (1995, Study 5) found

that two separate measures of trait self-esteem each correlated in excess of .50 with the degree to

which respondents felt that other people valued and accepted them. Similarly, Cottrell and Leary

(2001) found that perceived acceptance accounted for almost 40% of the variance in trait self-

esteem

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In an experimental study, Haupt and Leary (1997) showed that people with low self-esteem

assume that other people who they have not yet met will be more likely to reject them than

people with high self-esteem.

Summary and Critique

In general, support for sociometer theory is quite strong. Not only have studies designed

to test the theory’s predictions generally supported it, but the theory has been able to explain and

integrate much of the existing literature on self-esteem (Leary & Baumeister, 2000). Although

there seems little doubt that self-esteem is exquisitely sensitive to events that connote relational

devaluation and that people act as if they use self-esteem to gauge their social acceptability, the

question may be raised of whether self-esteem is “only” a sociometer. Is self-esteem affected

only by events with real or imagined implications for acceptance and rejection, or do other

things influence self-esteem as well? When people appear to be motivated to protect or enhance

their self-esteem are they always actually seeking to increase social acceptance or avoid

rejection? Although the strong version of sociometer theory maintains that all self-esteem

phenomena are based on acceptance and rejection (or, possibly, are the result of processes that

have become functionally autonomous), we should be open to the possibility that self-esteem

may serve other interpersonal functions (Kirkpatrick & Ellis, in press)..

Dominance Theory

An often overlooked interpersonal perspective on self-esteem is offered by dominance

theory (Barkow, 1980). Like sociometer theory, dominance theory assumes that self-esteem

monitors aspects of the social environment. However, whereas sociometer theory conceptualizes

self-esteem as a monitor of relational value, dominance theory suggests that the self-esteem

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system evolved to monitor dominance (Barkow, 1980). Because dominance was associated with

increased reproductive success in the ancestral environment, systems evolved to monitor one’s

social standing and to motivate behaviors that increase one’s dominance. According to the

theory, self-esteem reflects the amount of attention, deference, and respect that one receives

from other people. Although the dominance hypothesis has not attracted much research

attention, evidence shows that perceptions of one’s social influence and dominance correlate

moderately with self-esteem as the theory predicts (Hamilton, 1971; Heaven, 1986; Raskin,

Novacek, & Hogan, 1991).

Deconfounding Dominance and Acceptance

One difficulty in assessing the dominance hypothesis involves the fact that dominance

and acceptance are typically confounded in everyday life. In general, people who are deferred to

and selected for positions of leadership are likely to feel more accepted than those who are never

dominant or influential within their social groups. At the same time, people who feel accepted

and valued may feel dominant and influential because they exercise referent power based on

their likeability.

To disentangle the natural confound between acceptance and dominance, we devised an

experimental paradigm in which participants received independent feedback regarding the

degree to which other people desired them as a member and as a leader of a group (Leary,

Cottrell, & Phillips, 2000). After participants completed a background questionnaire, copies of

their answers were ostensibly given to four other participants. Thus, each participant received

what they believed were copies of one another’s personal information questionnaires in order to

judge each person’s membership and leadership qualities.

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Each participant then rated the other four participants by allotting eight “membership

points” to indicate the degree to which he or she desired each other participant as a member of

the group. Participants were told to divide these eight points among the other four people in any

proportion they desired. Similarly, each participant was given eight “leadership points” that were

to be assigned to the other four people to indicate the degree to which the participant desired

each other participant as a leader of the group.

When the ratings were completed, the researcher ostensibly calculated the total

membership and leadership points that each participant received and gave the participants false

feedback regarding the number of membership and leadership points that they had been awarded

by the other participants. Although each participant logically could receive between 0 points (if

none of the other participants gave the person any points) and 32 points (if all of the four other

participants gave the person the maximum of 8 points), participants received between 2 and 14

points to make the feedback plausible. The feedback form showed the points that all five group

members ostensibly received, thereby allowing them to easily understand their relative standings

on the membership and leadership dimensions. Each participant received either a low or high

number of points on both the membership and leadership ratings, and we then used five different

measures to assess participants’ feelings about themselves.

As expected, high membership feedback not only made participants feel accepted but

also made them feel influential, and high leadership feedback not only increased perceptions of

dominance and influence but also led participants to feel accepted. Given that the two feedback

manipulations affected perceptions of both acceptance and dominance, it is not surprising that

four of the five measures of self-esteem revealed significant or nearly significant effects of both

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membership and leadership feedback.

To examine the unique influence of membership and leadership feedback, we partialed

out participants’ ratings of how accepted and influential they felt from their state self-esteem

scores. After doing so, membership feedback had an independent effect on two of the measures

of self-esteem, both membership and leadership feedback had separate unique effects on one

measure each, and neither membership nor leadership feedback had separate effects on the fifth

measure. In no instance did leadership feedback have an independent effect on self-esteem when

membership feedback did not. The most conservative interpretation of these results is that they

provide support for both sociometer and dominance theory, although the membership (i.e.,

acceptance) feedback showed more and stronger independent effects than the leadership (i.e.,

dominance) feedback.

Dominance and Trait Self-Esteem

If self-esteem reflects perceived dominance as dominance theory maintains, individual

differences in self-esteem should be strongly related to perceptions of dominance and influence,

and research supports this hypothesis (Hamilton, 1971; Heaven, 1986; Raskin et al., 1991).

However, again, the natural confound between perceived dominance and perceived acceptance

makes it necessary to partial out perceived acceptance in order to discern the unique relationship

between perceived dominance and self-esteem.

In a study designed to test predictions of dominance theory and sociometer theory

regarding the basis of trait self-esteem (Cottrell & Leary, 2001), 180 undergraduate students

completed multiple measures of perceived dominance, perceived acceptance, and trait self-

esteem. Results showed that both perceived dominance and perceived acceptance accounted for

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unique variance in trait self-esteem, but that perceived acceptance consistently accounted for

substantially more variance in self-esteem than perceived dominance. Whereas perceived

acceptance accounted for between 9% and 21% of the unique variance in trait self-esteem

(depending on the analysis), perceived dominance accounted for between 0% and 5% of the

unique variance. (Together, perceived acceptance and perceived dominance accounted for

between 40 and 50% of the variance in trait self-esteem.) In addition, whereas the degree to

which participants felt valued by particular people in their lives consistently predicted trait self-

esteem, the degree to which participants thought those individuals perceived them as influential

and dominant was unrelated to their self-esteem.

Summary and Critique

Overall, the data suggested that perceived dominance may account for unique variance in

self-esteem as dominance theory predicts. Even with perceived acceptance partialed out,

perceived dominance predicted both state and trait self-esteem. If dominance theory has a

weakness, it is that it does not capture the full range of situations that affect self-esteem.

Although dominance is by no means unimportant in interpersonal relations, human groups are

characterized less by dominance hierarchies than the nonhuman primates that provided the

model for the theory. Human self-esteem appears to be affected by many events that do not

involve dominance. Thus, it seems unlikely that dominance tells the entire story of self-esteem.

Conclusions

Despite their differences, terror management, sociometer, and dominance theory concur

that self-esteem is inherently tied to interpersonal processes and, thus, is understandably affected

by interpersonal events, other people’s appraisals, and the individual’s perceptions of his or her

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personal characteristics. Of the three, terror management theory’s perspective on self-esteem has

the least support. As noted earlier, this does not suggest that people’s concerns about their deaths

do not have profound effects on their perceptions of other people and themselves, but rather that

self-esteem per se does not seem to be uniquely connected to death anxiety or serve as a special

buffer against it (except in as much as it is related to anxiety more generally). In the one head-to-

head test against sociometer theory, self-esteem was related to anxiety from thinking about

rejection but not about death.

Dominance theory fares somewhat better. Unique variance in state self-esteem can be

predicted by one’s perceived dominance in a particular context, and trait self-esteem is related to

one’s general sense of being dominant and influential. Even so, head-to-head competition

continually showed that self-esteem was more strongly related to perceived acceptance than

dominance, thus suggesting that acceptance may be more central to self-esteem than dominance.

The original statements of sociometer and dominance theory (e.g., Barkow, 1980; Leary

& Downs, 1995) suggest two different interpersonal bases for self-esteem--one involving

acceptance and the other involving dominance. To the extent that being accepted and being

dominant both lead to beneficial outcomes, it is certainly possible that self-esteem serves to

monitor and respond to interpersonal outcomes vis-a-vis both acceptance and dominance. In fact,

taking the evolutionary perspectives advanced by both Barkow (1980) and Leary and Downs

(1995; see also Kirkpatrick & Ellis, in press), one could see how both acceptance and dominance

would have increased individuals’ chances of survival and reproduction in the ancestral

environment, possibly leading to psychological mechanisms that track these important outcomes.

However, the effects of acceptance and dominance on self-esteem might be mediated by

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a single process. Perhaps self-esteem monitors not acceptance or dominance per se but rather the

individual’s social value to other people. The important consideration may not be whether the

person is accepted or dominant, but rather whether he or she is regarded as a valued group

member or relational partner (friend, mate, coalition member, or whatever). People may be

relationally valued for many reasons. They may be friendly and likeable, thereby engendering

affection and acceptance based on their social desirability. Alternatively, they may emerge as a

central, dominant member of a social group, thereby making themselves valued by virtue of their

leadership ability, strength, influence, or effectiveness. People may also be valued because they

are competent at important tasks, or because they promote cooperation and cohesiveness among

group members. In each instance, the individual would be relationally valued by other people,

albeit for different reasons. Perhaps sociometer theory and dominance theory converge in a

common process for monitoring relational value.

Along these lines, Leary and Baumeister (2000) suggested, “self-esteem serves as a

subjective monitor of one's relational evaluation--the degree to other people regard their

relationships with the individual to be valuable, important, or close” (p. 9). Importantly,

relational value may go beyond considerations other than simply whether the individual is liked

and accepted but that nonetheless make the person eligible for desired social outcomes.

Believing that one possesses attributes that lead one to be valued by others will result in higher

self-esteem than believing that one does not possess such attributes (or, worse, believing that

one’s characteristics are likely to lead to relational devaluation).

At this point, the choice between a model that posits two distinct processes (acceptance

and dominance) versus a single process that subsumes social acceptance and dominance

Leary - 22

(relational value) is a matter of preference. The one-process model has the benefit of parsimony

to recommend it, but future research is needed to determine whether the effects of both

acceptance and dominance on self-esteem are mediated by an individual’s perception of his or

her relational value.

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Table 1. Correlations Between Trait Self-Esteem and Subscales of the RDAS

RDAS Subscale Alpha Self-Feelings Self-

Regard

Nonexistence .92 -.11

-.14

Loss of control .58 -.18*

-.20*

After-death events .66 -.11

-.18*

Pain .71 -.20*

-.28**

Total RDAS Score .90 -.17*

-.22*

Note. *p < .05; **p < .01; Cronbach's alpha coefficient was .87 for the self-feelings measure and

.89 for the self-regard scale.

Table 2. Correlations Between Trait Self-Esteem and Domains of Death Anxiety

Domain of Death Anxiety Self-

Feelings Self-

Regard

Uncertainty about what happens after death -.17*

-.18*

Being separated from loved ones -.06

-.04

Things not done; goals not reached -.03

-.11

Other people's distress

-.08

-.06

No longer existing

-.09

-.13

Possible pain while dying

-.08

-.12

Overall

-.09

.01

Note. *p < .05

Table 3. Correlations Between Trait Self-Esteem and Anxiety in Each Experimental Condition

Essay Condition

Control Death

Rejection

Self-Feelings .02

-.19

-.73*

Self-Regard -.08

-.30

-.78*

Note. *p < .001