Self-esteem and the effects of success and failure feedback on performance1

Abstract

High and low self-esteem subjects received success or failure feedback regarding their performance on a task described as measuring their sensitivity to other people. Presumably as part of another study, changes in their self-perceptions regarding sensitivity to others were assessed, as well as changes in their performance on a different task Changes in self-perception were greater when the feedback was consistent with subjects' overall level of self-evaluation Task performance following failure was poorer than that following success HSE subjects performed better following success feedback, and LSE subjects performed more poorly following failure There were no significant performance changes for the HSE-failure and LSE-success subjects. The degree of change in self-perception of sensitivity to others was highly correlated with the magnitude of performance changes