Think Lowly of Yourself? Then You’re More Likely to Think Lowly of Others

According to the EurekAlert! press release “People with low self-esteem show more signs of prejudice,” from the Association for Psychological Sciences, people that feel badly about themselves are more likely to exhibit negative feeling toward people or groups of people that are different from themselves. 

In this research, scientists gave participants a 12 question test that required a creative thought process to reach an accurate answer for each of the questions.  None of the participants did well on the test.  By telling half of the participants their scores, which were rarely over two-points, in relationship to a “made-up” test average of nine, the researchers were able to experimentally induce a sense of lower self-esteem in these participants.  By relating their scores to the false test average, these participants began to feel bad about themselves. 

The other half of the participants were simply told that their tests would be graded later, and thus without an indication how badly or well they performed on the test, their self-esteem should not be affected.  

All participants were then required to take the Implicit Association Test (IAT).  The IAT is a test that was created to specifically measure the reflexive or automatic response of people toward random words and images.  The IAT can quantitatively measure prejudice in an individual, at least inb regards to this specific test.  The results showed that participants that felt bad about themselves, after realizing they did terribly on the initial test, exhibited increased amounts of prejudice.

So does this mean, if we are to end racism, homophobism, and religionism, then perhaps we should just send every pathetic ignorant jerk to a self-help seminar?  I say give it a shot.