Secure and Defensive High Self-Esteem

Long-standing theories have suggested high self-esteem (SE) can assume qualitatively different forms that are related to defensiveness. The authors explored whether some high-SE individuals are particularly defensive because they harbor negative selffeelings at less conscious levels, indicated by low implicit SE. In Study 1, participants high in explicit SE but low in implicit SE showed the highest levels of narcissism-an indicator of defensiveness. In Studies 2 and 3, the correspondence between implicit and explicit SE predicted defensive behavior (in-group bias in Study 2 and dissonance reduction in Study 3), such that for high explicit-SE participants, those with relatively low implicit SE behaved more defensively. These results are consistent with the idea that high SE can be relatively secure or defensive.