Reflections of the Self: How Self-Esteem Determines Decision Framing and Increases Risk Taking

Historically, research examining the influence of individual personality factors on decision processing has been sparse. In this paper we investigate how one important individual aspect, self-esteem, influences imposition and subsequent processing of ambiguously, negatively or positively framed decision tasks. We hypothesized that low self-esteem individuals would impose a negative frame onto ambiguous decision problems and would be especially sensitive to negatively framed decision tasks. In Study 1 we utilized a self-framing procedure and demonstrated that HSE participants were evenly divided in the hedonic valence they self-imposed whereas LSE participants were more likely to self-impose a negative frame. When these differences were accounted for, HSE and LSE participants were equivalent in risk seeking/avoiding choices. Study 2 used a risky-choice framing task and found that LSE individuals were especially sensitive to the negative frame. Study 3, provided converging evidence and generalization of these findings to a reflection tasks involving money. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. key words framing effects, decision making, self-esteem, personality