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2000 4: 290Pers Soc Psychol RevAbraham Tesser

On the Confluence of Self-Esteem Maintenance Mechanisms  

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Personality and Social Psychology Review2000, Vol. 4, No. 4, 290-299

Copyright ( 2000 byLawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

On the Confluence of Self-Esteem Maintenance Mechanisms

Abraham TesserDepartment ofPsychologyThe Ohio State University

A case is made for the substitutability of self-esteem regulation mechanisms such as

cognitive dissonance reduction, self-affirmation, and social comparison. For exam-

ple, a threat to self via cognitive dissonance might be reduced by a favorable socialcomparison outcome. To explain substitution, it is suggested that self-esteem regula-tion mechanisms inevitably produce affect and that affect mediates the completion ofvarious self-esteem regulation processes. Substitution can be understood in terms ofthe transfer ofaffectfrom the initial mechanism to the substitute mechanism. To be ef-fective, this transfer must take place without awareness. Also discussed is the substitu-tion ofself-esteem regulation mechanisms across different self-domains versus withina single self-domain. Current theory suggests that substitution might be more effectivewithin domain; that is, it is better to bolster the aspect ofselfthat has been threatened.It is suggested here, however, that substitution across self-domain might be relativelyresilient and easier to accomplish.

This article is about mechanisms assumed to pro-tect, augment, or maintain self-esteem. Much of thework on self-esteem regulation mechanisms is pro-grammatic, but research programs seem to be develop-ing independently around separate mechanisms.Herein I attempt to integrate some of the research onsuch mechanisms.

Background

Psychology has seen an explosion of research on theself in the last few decades. That explosion is easy totrack objectively. Entering the word self into thePsychInfo search engine generated the data for Figure1. I recorded the number of hits for every 5th year start-ing with 1970 and divided these numbers by the totalnumber of publications for each year to correct for thegrowth in research in general. At least a couple ofthings are worth noting in this figure. First, research onthe self is a growth industry. Compared to research ingeneral, there has been a threefold increase in research

This article is based on an address given by Abraham Tesser at theSociety for Experimental Social Psychology, Saint Louis, Missouri,October 1999.

I am grateful to the National Institute for Mental Health GrantK05-MH01233 for its support.

Work on this article was completed while Abraham Tesser was avisiting professor at The Ohio State University.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Abraham Tesser, Depart-ment of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602.E-mail: atesser@arches.uga.edu

on the self in the last 30 years. Second, the absolutelevel of the research on the self is surprisingly high. In1970, 1 out of 20 publications was relevant; now fully1 out of 7 is relevant!A big part of this explosive growth in self-related

research has been the documentation of phenomenaand the development of theories and models related tomaintaining (i.e., augmenting, protecting, or repairing)self-esteem. Table 1 presents a "top of the head" listingof some of these entities. The list is not intended to beexhaustive. The table is intended to convey that (a)there are a lot of entries; (b) these entries are quite di-verse in scope; and (c) these entries are all presumed, at

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Year

Figure 1. Proportion of "self"-related articles to total number ofarticles in PsychInfo for the years 1970-1998.

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CONFLUENCE OF SELF-ESTEEM

Table 1. A Small Sample of Theories,Phenomena Related to MaintainingRepairing) Self-Esteem

Hypotheses, and(Augmenting or

Sample

Cognitive ComplexityDenial

Dissonance ReductionFalse Uniqueness EffectGroup Identity Theory

Other DerogationOther EnhancementOverachievement

ProjectionRepression

Rationalization"Revisionist Historian"

Self-AffirmationSelf-Deception

Self-Discrepancy TheorySelf-Doubt

Self-ExpansionSelf-HandicappingSelf-Presentation

Self-Serving AttributionsSocial ComparisonSociometer Theory

StereotypingSymbolic Self-Completion Theory

Terror Management Theory

sonance and social comparison. Previous research alsoshows that misattributed or transferred affect can im-pact these regulation mechanisms. I propose that sub-stitution is driven by the affect generated by oneself-regulation mechanism being transferred to the sec-ond self-regulation mechanism. Taking a cue from themisattribution work and recent work on automatic pro-cesses, it is also proposed that the transfer of affectmust take place outside of awareness to be effective.

The affect transfer mechanism is indifferent to thespecific self-domain content of the self-esteem regula-tion mechanisms that may substitute for one another.Current theory and common wisdom suggest, however,that bolstering an aspect of self that has been threatenedmay be better for maintaining self-esteem than bolster-ing an aspect of self that has not been threatened. Thisimplies that substitution within a self-domain may bepreferred and easier to accomplish than substitutionsacross self-domains. Although there is some evidencefor this proposition, there is also evidence that substitu-tions within a single domain may be quite difficult. Inthis article I review research showing that substitutionacross different domains often is easier to accomplishthan substitution within the same domain.

least by some experts, to be related to the maintenanceof self-esteem. The entries in Table 1 are so numerousand so diverse that elsewhere I have referred to them asthe "self-zoo" (Tesser, Martin, & Cornell, 1996).Some of these mechanisms are so different from oneanother that it is difficult to see how they possibly canbe regulating the same, unitary thing. The differencesand commonalties among such mechanisms are thesubject of this article.

Theoretical Overview

Research reviewed and reported here suggests thatmany qualitatively different-looking self-esteem regu-lation mechanisms are substitutable for one another.For example, a threat to self-esteem via social compar-ison may be addressed by increased self-affirmation;bolstering self-esteem via favorable social comparisonmay decrease subsequent dissonance reduction. De-spite the qualitative differences in these mechanisms,all have one crucial commonality: affect or arousal.Threats to self-esteem generate negative affect, andbolstering self-esteem generates positive affect. Thesechanges in affect or arousal might be the key tosubstitutability.

Previous research has shown that arousal mediatesmany self-regulation processes such as cognitive dis-

Three Self-Esteem RegulationProcesses

The first column of Table 2 presents three genericself-esteem maintenance mechanisms. Many expertsrecognize social comparison as a mechanism by whichself-esteem is affected. The social comparison per-spective is quite broad and encompasses a number ofviewpoints. The specific variant of this perspectivethat I focus on here is the self-evaluation maintenance(SEM) model. According to this model (e.g., Tesser,1988), changes in self-evaluation are instigated by theoutstanding performance of a close other. If that per-formance is on a dimension that is important to the self,then evaluation is threatened via comparison; if theperformance is on an unimportant dimension, thenevaluation may be augmented via "basking in reflectedglory." To augment self-esteem or to reduce a threat toself-esteem, individuals can change the importance ofthe comparison domain, reduce or increase their close-ness to the comparison person, or attempt to alter theperformance difference.

The process described by cognitive dissonance the-ory is also presumed to affect self-esteem, at least bysome (e.g., E. Aronson, 1969; Greenwald & Ronis,1978). The relevance of this mechanism to self-esteemis not without controversy (cf. Harmon-Jones & Mills,1999). For the sake of argument, however, let us assumethat the experience of cognitive dissonance is a threat toself-esteem. What instigates this threat? Often, it is

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TESSER

Table 2. Some of the Diversity in Self-Esteem Maintenance Mechanisms

Mechanism Instigating Conditions Resolution

Social Comparison (e.g., Self-Evaluation A close other's better performance Change importance of domain; reduceMaintenance Model) closeness; change relative performance

Cognitive Dissonance Behavior follows from the obverse of belief Usually, attitude changeValue Expression (e.g., Self-Affirmation) Opportunity to express importance of value Declare importance of value to self

"freely chosen" behavior that is inconsistent with one' sbeliefs. Note how different this is from the SEM instiga-tor. The SEM instigator is interpersonal, has little to dowith inconsistency, and may not even be initiated by theactor. The dissonance instigator is intrapersonal, fo-cuses on inconsistency, and is self-initiated.

One of the most frequently studied behaviors thatwill resolve a dissonance threat is attitude change inthe direction of the behavior. This resolution is alsoquite different from the SEM resolution. Althoughchange in importance is one mode of resolving SEMthreats, the other modes are clearly interpersonal andhave little if anything to do with attitude change.A third mechanism for regulating self-esteem,

value expression, has important roots in attitudechange with the functional theorists (e.g., Katz, 1960;Smith, Bruner, & White, 1956), but here the focus is onSteele's (e.g., 1988) notion of self-affirmation. Thismechanism is also quite different from SEM and fromdissonance: The locus of dissonance is the choice tobehave inconsistently; value threat need not beself-initiated. The resolution of dissonance is usuallyattitude change; the resolution of self-affirmation is thedeclaration and maintenance of an important value.

Are These Sovereign, IndependentProcesses?

I have dwelled on the apparent differences amongthree well-known mechanisms by which self-esteemmay be affected. Despite their diversity, however, thediscipline's collective wisdom in classifying each as aself-esteem maintenance mechanism implies that thesemechanisms have something fundamental in common.They may indeed have something in common, but howdo we know? Kurt Lewin (e.g., 1935) and his students,particularly Ovsiankina (1928), provided some guid-ance. Let us assume that people are motivated to main-tain self-esteem; that is, there is a goal to maintainself-esteem. Lewin and Ovsiankina suggested that thesubstitutability of one activity for another provides in-formation about the extent to which each activity ser-vices the same goal.

If two behaviors serve the same goal, then these be-haviors should be substitutable for one another. For ex-ample, suppose I have chosen to behave inconsistently.Now, I take the opportunity to affirm an important

value. If the dissonance associated with the inconsis-tent behavior "depletes" some resource related to GoalX and self-affirmation increases that same resource,the need to reduce dissonance (i.e., to change one' s at-titude) should be reduced. If, however, self-affirmationproduces resources related to Goal Y, then one wouldexpect no impact on subsequent dissonance reduction.In general, then, it can be concluded that if instigatingor resolving one mechanism affects the extent to whichpersons attempt to resolve a second mechanism, thenboth mechanisms must be linked to the same goal.

In 1983, Steele and Liu completed the study just de-scribed. They found that persons who experiencedcognitive dissonance and affirmed themselves showedless dissonance reduction in the form of attitudechange than did persons who experienced dissonanceand did not affirm themselves. Self-affirmationseemed to substitute for dissonance reduction. Thisseminal demonstration, as important as it is, leaves avariety of questions unanswered. First, there is thequestion of generality. Will self-affirmation also sub-stitute for the resolution of unfavorable social compar-isons? Will favorable social comparisons substitute fordissonance reduction? There is also a question of sym-metry: A demonstration that self-affirmation affectsdissonance reduction does not necessarily imply thatinstigating dissonance will affect the tendency toself-affirm. If these questions of generality are re-solved positively, there is the more interesting questionof how these qualitatively different mechanisms com-municate with one another. What precisely is the me-dium of exchange in the economics of self-esteem?

The Question of Generality

There is now a critical mass of studies showing thatvarious self-esteem regulation mechanisms substitutefor one another. Our first study (Tesser & Cornell,1991) attempted to show that self-affirmation can sub-stitute for social comparison. Participants reported tothe experiment with a friend, and two pairs of friendsparticipated in each session. Participants were told thateach of them would have an opportunity to identifywords from clues. Half of the participants were led tobelieve that performance on this task was related to im-portant abilities, and half were led to believe that per-formance was unrelated to important abilities. Before

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CONFLUENCE OF SELF-ESTEEM

proceeding with the word task, participants in an affir-mation condition responded to questions about an im-portant value, and participants in a no-affirmationcondition responded to questions about an unimportantvalue. Each participant then had an opportunity toidentify a word from clues provided by the other par-ticipants. The SEM model suggests that being outper-formed on a relevant (or important) task, particularlyby a friend, would be threatening. Therefore, partici-pants were expected to give harder clues to theirfriends than to strangers. On the other hand, being out-performed on a low-relevance task, particularly by afriend, would provide an opportunity to bask in re-flected glory. Here participants would be expected togive easier clues to their friends than to strangers.

The results of this experiment are shown in Figure2. As shown in the no-affirmation panel, the SEM pre-diction held quite well. When the word task was de-scribed as personally relevant, participants were kinderto strangers than they were to friends. When the wordtask was described as low in relevance, participantswere kinder to friends than to strangers. The SEM ef-fect is indexed by this interaction pattern. Clearly,self-affirmation reduces the SEM effect. The SEM sig-nature interaction pattern disappears among self-af-firming participants. It is particularly interesting thatthe pattern is destroyed by the change in one mean.With self-affirmation, high-relevance participants be-came kinder to their friends!

Steele and Liu (1983) showed that self-affirmationcan substitute for dissonance reduction; the Tesser andCornell (1991) study shows that self-affirmation alsocan reduce attempts to resolve threatening social com-parisons. These demonstrations, however, do not nec-

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Relevance ConditionsHigh

Figure 2. Difficulty of clues given to friends and strangers as a

function of opportunity to self-affirm and relevance or personalimportance oftask to self-definition. Note. From "On the Conflu-ence of Self-Processes," by A. Tesser and D. P. Cornell, 1991,Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 27. Copyright 1991by Academic Press. Reprinted with permission.

essarily imply that it goes the other way as well.Whether dissonance or SEM processes impact the pro-pensity to self-affirm is an empirical question. Severalstudies that address this question indicate that instigat-ing dissonance or unfavorable social comparison doesaffect self-affirmation. One recently completed study(Tesser, Crepaz, Collins, Cornell, & Beach, 2000)shows that the instigation of cognitive dissonance im-pacts self-affirmation.When participants reported to a "writing style"

study, they were asked to rank order the personal im-portance of 18 values before writing about them. Tomanipulate dissonance, the experimenter then "re-membered" another study. The administration of theuniversity was thinking about initiating a senior the-sis requirement, and they wanted written student in-put. In general, our student participants were againstthe idea of a senior thesis. High-dissonance partici-pants had a "choice" to write either pro or con argu-ments. To get them to "choose" the dissonant option,they were told that the experimenter already hadmany arguments against the idea and that it would be"a really big favor" if they would write arguments infavor of the senior thesis. Low-dissonance partici-pants were assigned to write in favor of a senior the-sis. Participants were told that they would write thearguments after the value study.

Following the dissonance manipulation, partici-pants were given an opportunity to affirm themselvesby writing an essay about values. Affirmation can bethought of as becoming clearer about the self-that is,not only who we are but also who we are not. There-fore, half of the participants wrote about a value thatthey ranked as important, and half wrote about a valuethey had ranked as quite unimportant. After complet-ing the value essays, participants were asked severalquestions intended to get at the extent to which thevalue reflected the self. For example, how importantwas the subject of the essay? Did the topic concern acentral or peripheral part of the self? How good or baddid the student feel after writing the essay? Reponsesto these questions were combined into a single index.

If dissonance increases the propensity to self-af-firm, one would expect to see a sharpening of self-val-ues in the high-dissonance condition. Compared to thelow-dissonance condition, the difference betweenone's important values and one's unimportant valuesshould be greater. This interaction was significant. Asshown in Figure 3, there was a clear sharpening in thevalue aspects of the self in the high-dissonance condi-tion. In short, instigating cognitive dissonance impactsself-affirmation.

Self-affirmation has figured in all the studies dis-cussed thus far. Perhaps self-affirmation is so importantto defending the self that substitution is unlikely unlessself-affirmation is somehow involved. This is not the

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No Affirmation

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High Choice Low ChoiceDissonance Manipulation

Figure 3. Specificity of value definition of self (defined as

self-descriptiveness of important value minus self-descriptive-ness of unimportant value) as a function of cognitive dissonancearousal. Note. From "Confluence of Self-Esteem RegulationMechanisms: On Integrating the Self-Zoo," by A. Tesser, N.Crepaz, J. Collins, D. Cornell, and S. Beach, 2000, Personalityand Social Psychology Bulletin. Copyright 2000 by Sage Publica-tions. Adapted with permission.

case. The substitution of one mechanism for anotherworks even when affirmation is not one of the mecha-nisms. A recent study (Tesser et al., 2000) explored thepossibility that the instigation of dissonance will impactthe engagement of social comparison processes.

The paradigm was similar to the study just de-scribed. When participants reported for a "writingstudy," they learned that the university wanted to see

student essays in favor of and opposed to initiating a

senior thesis policy. In the high-dissonance condition,participants were induced to "choose" to write a disso-nant essay; in the low-dissonance condition, they were

assigned to write a dissonant essay. Before getting tothe senior thesis essays, however, there was a

self-evaluation maintenance manipulation. Partici-pants were asked to write a story about a recent timewhen they engaged in a task with another person andthe other person outperformed them. Participants as-

signed to the SEM reflection condition were in-structed, "In this case, it was not important for you

personally to do well at the task." Participants in theSEM comparison condition were instructed, "In thiscase, it was very important for you personally to dowell at the task." All participants were instructed to re-

call the situation as vividly as possible and describewhat they were thinking and feeling. After writing theSEM essay, participants filled out a questionnaire. Ourmajor dependent variable was how closely they ratedthe person who had outperformed them.

The SEM prediction is straightforward. Being out-performed on an important or relevant task, particularlyby a close other, is threatening. Therefore, participantsin the comparison condition should reduce closeness to

the other. On the other hand, being outperformed on a

low-relevance task, particularly by a close other, pro-

vides the potential for basking in reflected glory. There-fore, participants in the reflection condition should tendto increase closeness. Now, if cognitive dissonance im-pacts social comparison, one would expect the SEMpredictions to be more strongly confirmed under highdissonance than under low dissonance.

The results are quite consistent with the idea that theinstigation of cognitive dissonance can affect socialcomparison processes. As shown in Figure 4, the SEMprediction is supported more strongly among partici-pants who are experiencing dissonance than among

participants who are not experiencing dissonance. Dis-sonance increased closeness in the reflection conditionand decreased closeness in the comparison condition.These are precisely the changes anticipated by theSEM model if the arousal of dissonance motivated in-dividuals to increase self-evaluation. In short, the re-

sults provide additional evidence for substitution, andthey do so even when self-affirmation is not involved.

These studies are not intended to cover comprehen-sively the domain of substitution studies but merely togive the reader a sample of what they are like. Our ownstudies were intended to follow up on Steele's (1988)groundbreaking work. There is now at least some evi-dence that all of our exemplar self-regulation mecha-nisms reciprocally affect one another (Tesser et al.,2000). Self-affirmation affects social comparison andcognitive dissonance; instigating favorable and unfa-vorable social comparison situations affects self-affir-

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Figure 4. The effect of cognitive dissonance on the rated psycho-logical closeness of another under conditions expected to in-crease closeness (reflection) and decrease closeness(comparison). Note. From "Confluence of Self-Esteem Regula-tion Mechanisms: On Integrating the Self-Zoo," by A. Tesser, N.Crepaz, J. Collins, D. Cornell, and S. Beach, 2000, Personalityand Social Psychology Bulletin. Copyright 2000 by Sage Publica-tions. Reprinted with permission.

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CONFLUENCE OF SELF-ESTEEM

mation and dissonance reduction, and instigatingdissonance affects self-affirmation and social compari-son. The strategy in carrying out this set of studies wasto select a set of familiar mechanisms that were very dif-ferent from one another and to explore systematicallytheir substitutability for one another. Clearly, this workdoes not exhaust self-esteem regulation mechanisms(e.g., see Table 1), and there are many other examples ofsubstitution in the literature (e.g., Beauregard &Dunning, 1998; Fein & Spencer, 1997; Greenberg &Pyszczynski, 1985; Josephs, Markus, & Tafarodi, 1992;Ybarra, 1999). To be sure, substitutability is not alwaysobserved (e.g., Tesser & Moore, 1990). Indeed, some ofthose instances of nonsubstitutability are examinednext. Nevertheless, the point here is that despite theirsubstantial surface differences, at least under some cir-cumstances, each of these processes seems to affect or

regulate the same, unitary goal (i.e., self-esteem mainte-nance).

The Affect Hypothesis'

How is substitution possible? How do these qualita-tively different mechanisms communicate with one

another? Despite their surface differences, there is an

abstract sense in which all of these mechanisms are

similar. All three of them can be construed as attemptsto match behavior to a standard. In social comparison,the standard for our behavior is another person; in dis-sonance, the standard for behavior is our own beliefs.In self-affirmation, the standard is our values. Awell-developed literature now exists concerning theantecedents and consequences of self-regulation (e.g.,Carver & Scheier, 1999; Duval & Wicklund, 1972;Martin & Tesser, 1996; Vallacher & Wegner, 1987).Part of that story is affect. An inevitable consequenceof attempts to regulate self-esteem is affect (Carver &Scheier, 1990; Hsee & Abelson, 1991). Successful at-tempts are associated with positive affect, and failedattempts are associated with negative affect. Indeed,recent research (Chartrand, 1999) suggests that even

when behavior is relevant to a goal that is primed out-side of conscious awareness, success and failure elicitpositive and negative affect, respectively.

This theory posits that affect or arousal also medi-ates attempts to regulate self-esteem. It suggests thatthe common unit of exchange among various self-es-teem mechanisms is affect. Here are some things thatare known: All three mechanisms-dissonance (e.g.,Fazio & Cooper, 1983), SEM (e.g., Tesser, Millar, &Moore, 1988), and self-affirmation (Koole, Smeets,van Knippenberg, & Dijksterhuis, 1999)-are associ-

ated with affect. Both the dissonance mechanism (e.g.,Cooper & Fazio, 1984) and the SEM processes (e.g.,Achee, Tesser, & Pilkington, 1994; Tesser, Pilkington,& McIntosch, 1989) are mediated by affect; that is, dis-sonance reduction and SEM behaviors do not manifestthemselves in the absence of affect. Much of this re-

search depends on a misattribution paradigm (e.g.,Schachter, 1964; Zillman, 1983); that is, when arousalassociated with dissonance or SEM is attributed to an

irrelevant source, there is little in the way of disso-nance reduction or SEM resolutions. Indeed, Arndt(1999) drafted a comprehensive review of studies ofself-esteem regulation mechanisms that included phys-iological measures of affect. He concluded that self-es-teem threats increase arousal and that physiologicalarousal plays a role in the unfolding of self-defense.

Another line of work is related to this argument.Several research programs have shown that positiveaffect may serve as a resource in a variety of contexts(e.g., Aspinwall, 1998). For example, persons in goodmoods may be able to confront or deal more openlywith threats to the self (Trope & Pomerantz, 1998) or

threats to health (Aspinwall & Taylor, 1997; Hobfall,1989), or even to control subsequent negative emotion(Frederickson, 1998; Frederickson & Levenson, inpress). Positive affect is a resource that can be used("spent") in self-regulation to deal with adversity. In-deed, in a partial replication of some of this substitu-tion work, Simon, Greenberg, and Brehm (1995, Study2) showed that positive mood appears to reduce disso-nance reduction.

What about negative affect? Negative affect ap-

pears to mediate dissonance reduction (Higgins,Rhodewalt, & Zanna, 1979; Losch & Cacioppo, 1990).Such negative arousal may be misattributed or trans-ferred from the original mechanism to the substitutionmechanism (Zillman, 1983). At the same time, severaltheorists suggest that negative affect can signal dangerto the individual (Schwarz, 1990) and can lead to vigi-lance (Gray, 1987; Mandler, 1984). Increased vigi-lance may make opportunities for substitution more

salient. The affect associated with the original mecha-nism may be transferred to and serve as the mediator ofthe unfolding of the substitute mechanism.

Not everyone agrees that affect is the medium ofcommunication among various self-regulation pro-

cesses. Some investigators (Greenberg et al., 1990,1992) have shown substitutability in qualitatively dif-ferent systems. Questionnaire ratings of mood did notcorrelate with substitutability. In a study specificallydesigned to examine the mood mediational hypothesis,Steele, Spencer, and Lynch (1993, Study 3) manipu-lated mood before putting participants in a dissonantsituation. Although the moods were quite different inthe two conditions, there were no differences in disso-nance reduction.

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This section draws heavily on the discussion of affect in Tesser etal. (2000).

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TESSER

Awareness. The argument that affect is the cur-rency underlying substitution depends on the transferof affect from one mechanism to another. Such transferdepends, in turn, on individuals being unaware of theiraffective responses or unaware of the source of their af-fective responses. Thus, awareness (or lack of aware-ness) is crucial to the argument. The studies that fail toconfirm the role of affect may use blatant affect manip-ulations (e.g., Steele et al., 1993, Study 3) or self-reportquestionnaires that call conscious attention to affect(e.g., Greenberg et al., 1990). It very well may be thatfor affect to play its role in substitution, the individualmust be unaware ofthe affect or the source of the affect.

Several lines of work make this reconciliation plau-sible. Murphy and Zajonc (1993; Murphy, Monahan,& Zajonc, 1995) used subliminal primes to manipulateaffect. Although participants were unaware of theprimes, the manipulation had observable effects on theevaluation of other stimuli. Moreover, these effectsdisappeared under conditions where the participantswere aware of the affective primes. Second, the dem-onstration of the mediating role of arousal in self-es-teem mechanisms generally relies on a misattributionparadigm (Arndt, 1999). For misattribution to work,participants must be unaware of their arousal, or theymust be unaware of the source of the arousal. Finally,the effect of priming moods on judgments shows thatpriming is most effective when the individual is un-aware of the prime. It also shows that the impact of "ir-relevant" feelings on a particular judgment is greatestwhen the individual is unaware of the locus of the feel-ings (see Schwarz & Clore, 1983, for a nice demonstra-tion; see Bargh, 1992; Bless, in press; Clore, 1992;Martin & Achee, 1992, for reviews).

What is needed is a substitution study in which af-fect is measured indirectly or implicitly so as not to fo-cus the participant's attention on his or her affectivestate. Studies by Koole et al. (1999) meet this need.These researchers had participants fail a so-called IQtest and observed the extent to which they ruminatedabout the test. To demonstrate substitutability, someparticipants were and some were not given an opportu-nity to self-affirm. Substitution was observed. Partici-pants who self-affirmed ruminated about the IQ testless than did those who did not self-affirm. More cru-cial for present purposes was their measure of mood.Rather than using a self-report measure that would fo-cus participants' attention on their mood, the research-ers measured mood indirectly. Participants were askedto guess the meaning of a word that was exposed toobriefly for them to consciously read. The target wordsactually were nonsense words, and the measure of af-fect was the number of positive mood words partici-pants selected in guessing the meaning of the targetwords. As expected, more positive affect was associ-ated with the self-affirmation condition. Moreover, a

correlation analysis confirmed the mediational role ofpositive affect. When the implicit positive mood asso-ciated with self-affirmation was controlled, the substi-tution of self-affirmation for rumination disappeared.

In sum, if affect is an active agent in the substitutionof self-esteem regulation processes, then for it to be ef-fective it must be a secret agent. Affect that is clearlyidentified with an original source may be difficult totransfer or to associate with a substitute mechanism.

The Domain Question

Substitution has been observed not only across pro-cesses, such as social comparison and cognitive disso-nance, but across self-domains as well. For example,the dissonance issue in two studies concerned a seniorthesis, whereas the self-affirmation value or the socialcomparison performance domain had little or nothingto do with a senior thesis. In some ways, this makes theobserved substitution even more impressive; that is,there is substitution not only across different processesbut across different domains as well. Happily, this dou-ble substitution, across mechanism and domain, is con-sistent with the affect hypothesis; the domain shouldnot matter as long as affect is produced.

However, domain does matter. Defense is associ-ated not only with affect but also with meaning. De-fense mechanisms are about something, some issue orsome aspect of the self. To better understand substitu-tions within the same domain and across different do-mains, it is useful to think of the self as an organized,hierarchical structure. The structure might have "goodperson" at the top, "competent" and "compassionate"in the middle, and a myriad of individual competent orcompassionate behaviors at the bottom. A discrepancyin any of these identities is consequential to self-es-teem, and the consequences become more severe athigher levels of identity. As Cooper (1999) argued, adiscrepancy in one domain remains even if one has apositive self-regulation experience in another domain.This suggests that substitution will be facilitated if itreduces the original identity discrepancy or rendersthat identity less important. This also is the message in-herent in some of our most powerful and comprehen-sive theories of self-regulation (Carver & Scheier,1998; Hull, 1999; Vallacher & Wegner, 1987).

Indeed, there is evidence that people prefer to re-solve threats within the same domain rather than acrossdomains. For example, Stone, Wiegand, Cooper, andAronson (1997) threatened the self-esteem of partici-pants by making salient their hypocritical behavior innot using condoms. Such participants were more likelyto contribute to an unrelated charity than controls. Thisis simply another demonstration of substitution. How-ever, these substitutions took place only if participants

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could not purchase condoms and directly rectify theoriginal threat. In this study, participants preferred torectify their discrepant behavior within the same do-main rather than substitute across domains.

Despite its theoretical primacy, at least under someconditions, substitution within the same domain is ac-tually less effective than substitution across domains.Substitution within the same domain may be difficultfor at least two reasons. Substitute mechanisms in thesame self-domain tend to make one another salient andthus reduce the potential of nonconscious transfer ofaffect. Also, the "fix" mechanism, by showing theself' s positive potential in that domain, might provide acontrast for the threat mechanism in the same domain,thus exacerbating the threat. These difficulties may bepart of the reason that psychotherapy cannot proceedby simply and directly confronting the client with posi-tive information about threatened aspects of self. Obvi-ously, these concerns are less of an issue in substitutionacross domains.

Some experimental studies demonstrate the diffi-culties associated with substituting defense mecha-nisms within the same self-domain. For example,Blanton, Cooper, Skurnick, and Aronson (1997) ma-nipulated choice in getting participants to agree towrite an essay against increased funding for disabledstudents. After writing this dissonant essay, some par-ticipants received feedback that was self-affirming. Inthe "domain-different" condition, the feedback af-firmed their creativity. As expected, there was substi-tution. Affirmed participants reduced dissonance lessthan controls. In the "domain-same" affirmation con-dition, participants who had just agreed to write an es-say against funding for disabled students receivedfeedback that affirmed their compassion. What wouldone expect? In general, an affirmation should reducedissonance because, according to the affect hypothesis,it transfers positive affect. In this case, however, tellingpeople about their compassion after they agreed towrite an essay reducing funding for disabled studentsmight have increased the discrepancy or the salience ofthe discrepancy, thereby increasing the negative affectassociated with the dissonance. In this case, affirma-tion actually should increase rather than decrease dis-sonance reduction. This is what Blanton et al. (1997)observed. There is also evidence that persons tend toavoid information about their compassion under thesecircumstances (J. Aronson, Blanton, & Cooper, 1995).A recent study by Arndt and Greenberg (1999)

showed how bolstering in a particular domain can beundermined when the individual is threatened in thesame domain. Participants either did or did not havetheir self-esteem bolstered. Bolstering consisted ofpositive feedback regarding the individual's suitabilityfor their college major or positive feedback regardinginterpersonal relationships. Half of the participants

were then threatened by making thoughts of deathsalient. A typical response to mortality salience is der-ogation of persons who attack one' s culturalworldview. Participants were then given essays attack-ing an aspect of their cultural worldview, their schoolmajor.2 Participants whose self-esteem was bolsteredin a different domain (i.e., interpersonal relations)showed substitution. They derogated the essay writerno more than did nonthreatened control participants.On the other hand, participants whose self-esteem wasbolstered in the same area as the threat, school major,were defensive. They derogated the essay writer morethan did their interpersonal counterparts and more thandid no-threat controls. In short, threat in the same do-main seemed to undermine the bolstering effect orsubstitutability of the positive feedback.

Substitution of self-esteem regulation mechanismswithin the same domain is sometimes more difficultthan substitution across different domains. Theory isclear in pointing to the importance of repairing aspectsof the self that are subjected to threat. Recognizing theimportance of reducing the original discrepancy, how-ever, does not imply that cross-domain substitution ismerely a temporary fix. Although cross-domain substi-tution may not reduce the original discrepancy "objec-tively," a variety of psychological mechanismsconverge to increase the viability of cross-domain sub-stitution. For example, direct and indirect evidenceshows that substitution reduces the importance of theoriginal discrepancy. For example, Hull (1999) re-viewed evidence suggesting that the positive affect as-sociated with substitution can reduce the perceiveddiscrepancy in the original domain. The work on com-pensatory self-esteem (Baumeister & Jones, 1978;Boney-McCoy, Gibbons, & Gerrard, 1999; Brown &Smart, 1991; Greenberg & Pyszczynski, 1985; Wood,Giordano-Beech, & Ducharme, 1999) suggests thatthreat in one domain leads people to emphasize the im-portance of other, more positive self-domains. Indeed,Simon et al. (1995) found that self-affirmation in onedomain tended to trivialize an unresolved dissonant actin another domain. Finally, the salience of the originaldiscrepancy should be reduced relative to the substi-tute domain. With time and relatively little attention,memory for the original discrepancy might be ex-pected to decay (Hull, 1999).

In sum, self-domain similarity seems to make a differ-ence in facilitating substitutability. There are some theo-

There was also a set of conditions in which the essays attacked theUnited States. In this case, both the school major bolstering and theinterpersonal bolstering are in different self-domains from the UnitedStates. In both conditions, substitution was observed. Persons threat-ened by mortality salience who had their self-esteem bolsteredshowed less defensiveness than persons threatened by mortality sa-lience who did not have their self-esteem bolstered.

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TESSER

retical reasons for expecting substitution of onemechanism for another to be easier and more effectivewithin the same domain. However, such substitutions aresometimes difficult to accomplish. Substitutions acrossdomains are often easier to accomplish and may producemore resiliency in self-esteem than initially thought.

Conclusions

Research on the self has been a growth industryover the last 30 years. This research has spawned amultitude of self-esteem regulation mechanisms,which tend to be studied in isolation. In an attempt tointegrate some of this work, I have presented evidenceindicating that at least some of these mechanisms aresubstitutable for one another. An accumulation of stud-ies in the self-domain suggests that affect is a plausiblecandidate for understanding some aspects of substitu-tion. Recent work points to the issue of domain simi-larity in facilitating substitution. It is suggested thatsubstitution across different self-domains often may beresilient and easier to accomplish than substitutionwithin the same self-domain. There is still much to bedone to validate this line of theorizing. However, an in-tegrated theory of self-esteem regulation seems worththe effort.

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