Study 1 examined the extent to which stability and level of self-esteem predicted cognitive and emotional reactions to interpersonal feedback. Among high self-esteem individuals, instability was associated with acceptance and positive emotions following positive feedback but to rejection and defensiveness following negative feedback. Among low self-esteem individuals, instability was unrelated to reactions to positive feedback but was related to less defensiveness and greater acceptance of negative feedback. Study 2 examined the extent to which variability and importance of specific self-evaluations were associated with instability of global self-esteem. Discussion focused on the roles of level and stability of self-esteem in reactions to evaluations and on the nature of self-esteem instability.

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The current literature describes a number of mechanisms by which self-esteem is affected and regulated. Using exemplars from three different families of such mechanisms-cognitive consistency, social comparison, and value expression-the three studies reported here (in addition to others in the literature) indicate that these qualitatively different mechanisms are not independent of one another. The evidence is interpreted as showing the unitary nature of self-esteem regulation and that individuals tend to be satisficers rather than maximizers regarding self-esteem.

We investigated the operation of courtesy stigma with American male college students who reacted to a fictitious male student described as gay, rooming by choice with a gay male student, involuntarily assigned to room with a gay, or rooming with a male heterosexual. Among respondents who expressed strong intolerance of gays, the voluntary associate of a gay was perceived as having homosexual tendencies and as possessing the same stereotyped personality traits attributed to a gay. No such courtesy stigma was attached to the involuntary associate of a gay by these respondents. Relatively tolerant respondents engaged in no courtesy stigmatization at all. Thus, courtesy stigmatization occurred only under circumscribed conditions and appeared to depend more on the tendency of highly intolerant individuals to infer that a male student who apparently liked a gay individual was himself gay than on a motivation to maintain cognitive consistency.