Self- and interpersonal evaluations: Esteem theories versus consistency theories.

Abstract

Two social psychological theories are contrasted and different predictions are derived concerning the relation between self and interpersonal evaluations. The prediction from self-esteem theory is that the higher an individual's evaluation of himself, the less his tendency to reciprocate evaluations from others, whereas the prediction from self-consistency theory is that the higher the individual's evaluation of himself, the greater his tendency to reciprocate evaluations from others. Studies bearing on these predictions are reviewed, and the evidence tends to support self-esteem theory. Furthermore, two extensions of the assumptions of self-esteem theory are presented and discussed in terms of accounting for results which apparently support self-consistency theory. Finally, whether or not the experimental subject is the direct target of another person's actions appears to distinguish esteem results from consistency results. The implications of this distinction for other problems of person perception and social evaluation are discussed. A general conclusion is that cognitive consistency theories may be somewhat overworked as explanatory frameworks for the study of social evaluations. Although the interpersonal events involving the evaluations an individual receives from other people occur experimentally and in the real world with some regularity, confusions arise in attempting to explain these regularities. We observe that people typically talk more (e.g., Bavelas, Hastorf, Gross, & Kite,