Unconscious self-esteem study. Psychologists define implicit self-esteem as unconscious evaluations of one's worth or value. In contrast, explicit self-esteem refers to the extent to which a person consciously considers oneself as valuable and worthy.
An article published in the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis (March 2006) investigated whether implicit self-esteem is really unconscious. A sample of 257 college undergraduate students completed a questionnaire designed to measure implicit self-esteem and explicit self-esteem. Thus, an implicit selfesteem score (x1) and explicit self-esteem score (x2) was obtained for each. (Note: Higher scores indicate higher levels of self-esteem.) Also, a second questionnaire was administered in order to obtain each subject's estimate of their level of implicit self-esteem. This was called estimated implicit self-esteem (x3). Finally, the researchers computed two measures of accuracy in estimating implicit self-esteem: y1 = (x3 - x1) and y2 = |x3 - x1|.
(a) The researchers fit the interaction model, E(y1) = β0 + β1x1 + β2x2 + β3x1x2. The ttest on the interaction term, β3, was ''nonsignificant'' with a p-value > .10. However, both t-tests on β1 and β2 were statistically significant (p-value
(b) The researchers also fit the interaction model, E(y2) = β0 + β1x1 + β2x2 + β3x1x2. The t-test on the interaction term, β3, was ''significant'' with a p-value.