Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Mark A. Oakes has published an article, "Implicit and Explicit Self-esteem: Measure for Measure," in the latest volume of Social Cognition (Vol. 26, 2008). In the article, Oakes and his two co-authors (Jonathon Brown from the University of Washington and Huajian Cai from Sun Yat-Sen University in China) presented findings from their analysis of implicit and explicit measurements of self esteem.
Although traditionally measured by self-report, researchers have recently begun to measure self-esteem indirectly, using methods thought to tap implicit, unconscious attitudes. These implicit measures rarely show any correspondence with self-report measures of self-esteem, raising questions about what they assess. Using the Implicit Association Test, the authors demonstrated that explicit and implicit measures of self-esteem do correlate when the implicit measure is based on self-relevant stimuli and explicit self-esteem is represented as a feeling of self-liking, rather than a cognitive judgment of perceived competence. Their analysis considered the implications for understanding the nature and functions of self-esteem.
Although traditionally measured by self-report, researchers have recently begun to measure self-esteem indirectly, using methods thought to tap implicit, unconscious attitudes. These implicit measures rarely show any correspondence with self-report measures of self-esteem, raising questions about what they assess. Using the Implicit Association Test, the authors demonstrated that explicit and implicit measures of self-esteem do correlate when the implicit measure is based on self-relevant stimuli and explicit self-esteem is represented as a feeling of self-liking, rather than a cognitive judgment of perceived competence. Their analysis considered the implications for understanding the nature and functions of self-esteem.
