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.