A New Reliable and Valid Tool for Measuring Implicit Self-Esteem

Abstract

We investigated the reliability and predictive validity of a new response-window affective priming task (RW-APT) for the measurement of implicit self-esteem. Participants (N = 96) were administered the self-esteem RW-APT and filled out two measures of explicit self-esteem. To investigate the effect of explicit and implicit self-esteem on reactions to failure, we applied an anagram task in which participants received anagrams that were more difficult than expected. Three self-esteem criteria were obtained: pretask expectancy bias, perceived performance bias, and posttask expectancy bias. As hypothesized, explicit self-esteem and implicit self-esteem measures independently predicted all validity criteria. Taken together, the results show that RW-APT is a reliable and valid measure that might be an important addition to established measures of self-esteem.