Sociometer Theory

Function of Self-Esteem

Human beings and their hominid ancestors survived and prospered as species because they lived in cooperative groups. Given the importance of group living, natural selection favored individuals who sought the company of others and behaved in ways that led others to value, accept, and support them. Because social acceptance was vital, a psychological system evolved that monitored and responded to cues indicating that the person may be devalued and rejected by other people. Prior to the appearance of self-awareness in evolutionary history, this system presumably operated on the basis of affective responses to nonverbal cues. However, after human beings developed the mental capacity for self-awareness, detection of a threat to social acceptance also triggered a conscious analysis of the situation, including an assessment of one's own characteristics and behavior. Thus, state self-esteem—the valenced feelings that people have about themselves—rises and falls with changes in perceived relational value, alerting people to real and potential rejection and motivating actions that maintain relational value and social acceptance. The sociometer system monitors relational value in all of people's interpersonal encounters, including those with friends, romantic partners, group members, acquaintances, family members, and even strangers, although the question has been raised whether people possess a single sociometer that monitors acceptance in all relationships or a set of relationship-specific sociometers that operate in different interpersonal contexts.

From the standpoint of Sociometer Theory, events that lower self-esteem—such as failure, rejection, embarrassing situations, negative evaluations, and being outperformed by others—do so because they potentially lower people's relational value to other people. Many laboratory experiments show that participants who learn that other people have excluded them from groups or interactions, do not want to get to know them, or hold negative impressions of them report lower state self-esteem than those who believe that others accept them. Similarly, studies of people's reactions to real-world instances of rejection and ostracism show that people consistently report decreased self-esteem following rejection. In general, rejection has a greater effect on state self-esteem than does acceptance. Because people are usually accepted at some minimal level by most people with whom they interact, being included is the default situation.

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