Page 255 - The Social Animal

Self-Justification 237

What happens when an individual has low self-esteem? Theo-
retically, if such a person were to commit a stupid or immoral action,
he or she would not experience much dissonance. The cognition “I
have done an immoral thing” is consonant with the cognition “I am
a schlunk.” In short, people who believe themselves to be schlunks
expect to do schlunky things. In other words, people with low self-
esteem will not find it terribly difficult to commit immoral acts—be-
cause committing immoral acts is not dissonant with their
self-concept. On the other hand, people with high self-esteem are
more likely to resist the temptation to commit immoral acts because
to behave immorally would produce a great deal of dissonance.
I tested this proposition in collaboration with David Mettee. 66
We predicted that individuals who had a low opinion of themselves
would be more likely to cheat (if given the opportunity) than indi-
viduals who had a high opinion of themselves. It should be made
clear that we were not making the simple prediction that people who
believe themselves to be dishonest will cheat more than people who
believe themselves to be honest. Our prediction was a little more dar-
ing; it was based on the assumption that, if normal people receive a
temporary blow to their self-esteem (e.g., if they are jilted by their
lover or flunk an exam) and thus feel low and worthless, they are
more likely to cheat at cards, kick their dog, or do any number of
things consistent with a low opinion of themselves. As a function of
feeling they are low people, individuals will commit low acts.
In our experiment, we temporarily modified the self-esteem of
college students by giving them false information about their person-
alities. After taking a personality test, one third of the students were
given positive feedback; specifically, they were told the test indicated
that they were mature, interesting, deep, and so forth. Another one
third of the students were given negative feedback; they were told the
test indicated that they were relatively immature, uninteresting,
rather shallow, and the like. The remaining one third of the students
were not given any information about the results of the test.
Immediately afterward, the students were scheduled to partici-
pate in an experiment that had no apparent relation to the personal-
ity inventory, conducted by a different psychologist. As part of this
second experiment, the participants played a game of cards against
some of their fellow students.This was a gambling game in which the
students were allowed to bet money and were told they could keep