Femininity : moderator of effects of priming self-construals on females’ collective self-esteem (CSE)

Abstract

Psychologists have always been intrigued with the study of the self. Decades of research have seen the conceptualisation of the self through various stages of transformation, and recently, even incorporating relevant others into the definition of one’s self-concept, according to Tajfel’s and Turner’s Social Identity Theory (SIT, 1979, as cited in Tarrant, 2002, and Trepte, 2006; Turner, 1986). Naturally, new constructs, such as collective self-esteem (CSE, Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990; Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992), were developed to accommodate the new definition of one’s self-concept. Looking at the priming effects of three different self-construals – the private, relational, and the collective self-construals, this study aims to test the main hypothesis in 40 female university students, that femininity moderates the effects of priming different self-construals on one’s CSE with reference to one’s gender group (i.e., being a female) and to one’s friendship with a close female friend. Findings showed that femininity did indeed moderate the priming effects, but only in the private self condition, suggesting that there may be other variables that could account for the variance in CSE. This study brought the focus to gender role differences, rather than on gender differences, which had previously been, and still remains, the interest of researchers in the field. More work needs to be done in developing a more comprehensive explanatory framework, to allow better understanding of femininity as a moderator of the effects of priming different self-construals on females’ CSE.

Keywords: Self-construals, Priming, Collective Self-esteem, Females, Femininity, Social Identity Theory.