Journal of Personality and Social Psycholology, 1998 Aug;75(2):394-407

The moderating effect of self-esteem in reaction to voice: converging evidence from five studies.*

Brockner J, Heuer L, Siegel PA, Wiesenfeld B, Martin C, Grover S, Reed T, Bjorgvinsson S
Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA. jb54@columbia.edu

It has been posited that high self-esteem persons (high SEs) are more confident than low self-esteem persons (low SEs) of their capability to provide meaningful input in a decision process. If this is so, then high SEs should be more influenced by their perceived level of voice, relative to low SEs. Survey data from 4 field studies showed that voice was more positively related to various dependent variables among high SEs than low SEs. In Study 5, the authors experimentally manipulated voice as well as participants' beliefs about their capability to provide meaningful input. As expected, voice had a greater impact on the reactions of participants who were led to believe that they were

* Reproduced with permission of the APA - Journal of Personality and Social Psychology