Psychological Development and Education ›› 2023, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (6): 808-816.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2023.06.06

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Low Self-esteem or High'Other-esteem’? Differential Nature of Implicit Self-esteem in High and Low Socially Anxious Individuals: Evidence from EAST Study

LU Cuiping1, ZHENG Xifu2   

  1. 1. Center of Mental Health, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051;
    2. School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631
  • Published:2023-11-11

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Abstract: In the past few years, an Implicit Association Test (IAT) was used to assess socially anxious individuals' self-esteem and the results showed that non, as well as anxious individuals had a high implicit self-attitude. However, due to its relative nature and its sensitivity to task recoding task, IAT can only measure a relative attitude toward oneself. So the present study used a non-relative measure (the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task, EAST) that developed by De Houwer (2003) to explore the nature of implicit self-esteem as well as the differences of implicit self- attitude and other-attitude between the high and low socially anxious individuals. 44 high and 41 low socially anxious individuals were asked to complete the EAST. The present study focused on the implicit self-esteem as well as their general evaluation of others ('other-esteem'). The results indicated that: (1) Both groups had highly positive implicit self-esteem. Low socially anxious individuals displayed significantly negative 'other-esteem', but not for individuals with high social anxiety. There were significant differences between self and other attitudes in high and low groups; (2) High social anxious group had significantly lower positive implicit self-esteem (p<0.05), but significantly higher 'other-esteem' than the low social anxious group (p<0.05). Thus the degree of self-favouring was considerably weaker in high than in low socially anxious individuals (p<0.01). By and large, this study clearly showed that socially anxious individuals had a relatively low positive self-esteem but no negative 'other-esteem', so their self-favouring effects was particularly weak. Due to the lack of positive bias, high socially anxious individuals tend to be more objective and accurate in self and others cognition than low or non-anxious individuals. However, moderate positive bias of self enhancement can provide a self-protective mechanism that is beneficial to mental health. Individuals with social anxiety were characterized by the gap between attitude of self and others, and it may be this reduced tendency to self-favouring that is essential to social anxiety. In the end, the role of fear evaluation in social anxiety were discussed. As the core symptoms of social anxiety, fear of negative evaluation and fear of positive evaluation play important role in the formation of low self-esteem and high'other-esteem'.

Key words: social anxiety, self-esteem, extrinsic affective Simon task (EAST)

CLC Number: 

  • B844
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