The Effects of Self-Esteem and Perspective on Counterfactual Thinking
Amy Buddie
Miami University
Abstract
Two studies will explore the effects of self-esteem and perspective on counterfactual thinking. In the first study, subjects' self-esteem will be measured before they read a vignette about an act of harmdoing. The subjects are told to take the perspective of either the victim or the harmdoer while reading. They then will write an explanation of the event describing how things could have turned out differently, from the perspective of either the victim or the harmdoer.
In study two, subjects' self-esteem will be measured as before. They will then be asked to furnish autobiographical narratives of being harmed (victim narratives) and of harming someone else (perpetrator narratives). Following each written narrative, subjects will be asked to generate counterfactuals explaining how the event could have turned out differently. It is predicted that: (1) the number of spontaneous counterfactuals generated in the autobiographical narratives will not differ across conditions, and (2) the content of the counterfactuals will differ according to subjects= level of self-esteem and perspective.
Three categories of counterfactual thinking will be assessed in the present research. Counterfactuals can be (1) additive or subtractive, (2) internal or external, and (3) upward or downward. An additive counterfactual describes the addition of new antecedents, while a subtractive counterfactual removes a factual antecedent. An internal counterfactual focuses on the self, and an external counterfactual focuses on others. An upward counterfactual describes an alternative that is better than the actual outcome, and a downward counterfactual describes an alternative that is worse than the actual outcome.
It is predicted that subjects high in self-esteem taking the perspective of the victim will generate additive, external, and upward counterfactuals. Subjects low in self-esteem also taking the victim perspective will generate subtractive, internal, and downward counterfactuals. All subjects taking the perpetrator perspective, regardless of self-esteem, will generate additive, external, and downward counterfactuals. In sum, level of self-esteem predicts the content of counterfactual thoughts when the subject adopts the victim perspective but not when the subject adopts the harmdoer perspective. Victimizers use various strategies to protect themselves from feeling responsibility for the negative event, and this is predicted to be true across levels of self-esteem.
Finally, alternate plausible predictions are suggested. Specifically, Baumeister, Smart, & Boden (1996) make a strong case when suggesting that people high in self-esteem are much more prone to violence than people low in self-esteem. If this is the case, then perhaps victimizers high in self-esteem will differ in important ways from victimizers low in self-esteem. This area is discussed as well as other possible limitations of the study, and the author explores avenues of future research.
References
Baumeister, R.F., Smart, L., & Boden, J.M. (1996). Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem. Psychological Review, 103, 5-33.
Baumeister, R.F., Stillwell, A., & Wotman, S.R. (1990). Victim and perpetrator accounts of interpersonal conflict: Autobiographical narratives about anger. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 994-1005.
Roese, N.J. & Olsen, J.M. (1993). Self-esteem and counterfactual thinking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 199-206.
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