Self-esteem, compensatory self-enhancement, and the consideration
of health risk
Sue Boney McCoy, Frederick X. Gibbons, Meg
Gerrard
(1999) Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 25, 954-965.
Acknowledging that one engages in risk-increasing
behavior is a form of self-generated negative feedback that can engender
self-protective responses. This experiment examined the use of one of these
reactions, compensatory self-enhancement, following a manipulation that made
high and low self-esteem participants explicitly consider their sexual risk
behaviors. Participants with high (but not low) self-esteem responded to the
manipulation by self-enhancing on both personality ratings and ratings of their
contraceptive behavior. Positive self-ratings on personality traits were
negatively associated with subsequent ratings of perceived vulnerability to
sexually transmitted diseases.