Never Let Them See You Cry: Self-Presentation as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Exclusion and Self-Esteem

A debate exists concerning whether exclusion harms self-esteem. we hypothesized that social exclusion does harm self-esteem,but that this effect is evident only when self-presentational concerns to appear fine are minimal or people are unable to alter their report of self-esteem. in the first three studies,participants' explicit and implicit self-esteem were measured following an exclusion or comparison condition where self-presentational pressures were likely high. because respondents can easily control their reports on explicit measures,but not on implicit ones,we hypothesized that exclusion would result in lower self-esteem only when implicit measures were used. results confirmed this hypothesis. in the final study,self-presentational concerns were directly manipulated. when self-presentational concerns were high,only implicit self-esteem was lowered by exclusion. but,when such concerns were low,this impact on self-esteem was seen on implicit and explicit measures. implications for the sociometer hypothesis and the recent self-esteem debate are discussed. © 2013 by the society for personality and social psychology,inc.