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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 7, 881-893 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167206287120
© 2006 Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Your Money or Your Self-Esteem: Threatened Egotism Promotes Costly Entrapment in Losing Endeavors

Liqing Zhang

Carnegie Mellon University

Roy F. Baumeister

Florida State University

The present research explored egotism—maintaining favorable views of the self—as a motivation underlying entrapment in losing endeavors. Four studies suggested that threatened selfesteem would cause decision makers to invest and lose more money in a previously chosen course of action. Ego-threatened participants consistently lost more money than nonthreatened participants across diverse entrapping situations regardless of whether the outcome was ostensibly determined by luck (Experiments 1 and 4), ability (Experiment 2), or interpersonal competition (Experiment 3). Thus, pursuing favorable views of the self could be costly to decision makers' financial well-being and may produce self-defeating behaviors.

Key Words: ego threat • self-esteem • egotism • entrapment • decision making


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