Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem.

1996/01/01 by Roy F. Baumeister, Laura Smart, Joseph M. Boden · 2,319 citations
Medicine · Psychology · #Aggression #Anger #Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion #Developmental psychology #Ecology #Great Rift #Medical emergency #Medicine #Optimism, Hope, and Well-being #Personality Traits and Psychology #Poison control #Psychology #Self-esteem #Social psychology #Threatened species

paper · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.103.1.5

published in Psychological Review 103(1), 5-33 (American Psychological Association)

openalex publication_date 1996/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Conventional wisdom has regarded low self-esteem as an important cause of violence, but the opposite view is theoretically viable. An interdisciplinary review of evidence about aggression, crime, and violence contradicted the view that low self-esteem is an important cause. Instead, violence appears to be most commonly a result of threatened egotism--that is, highly favorable views of self that are disputed by some person or circumstance. Inflated, unstable, or tentative beliefs in the self's superiority may be most prone to encountering threats and hence to causing violence. The mediating process may involve directing anger outward as a way of avoiding a downward revision of the self-concept.

Citations

• Identity negotiation: Where two roads meet.
• Compensatory self-inflation: A response to the threat to self-regard of public failure.
• Self-esteem as an interpersonal monitor: The sociometer hypothesis.
• Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and affect.

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