Exploration of a nonreactive measure of self-esteem.

Abstract

Most measures of self-esteem are self-report scales which are highly susceptible to self-presentational biases. The present work reports on the development of a non-reactive measure of self-esteem. For each trial of this non-reactive measure, the self is primed by briefly (14--16 milliseconds) flashing a photograph of the participant's own face on a computer screen. The primed evaluations are then measured by recording how long it takes the participant to begin to pronounce a positive, negative, or neutral word. The empirical studies reported suggest that further alterations to and investigations of this methodology may yield a successful non-reactive measure of self-esteem. Suggestions for future research and the advantages of using a photograph of the self as the self prime are discussed.