High implicit self‐esteem is not necessarily advantageous: discrepancies between explicit and implicit self‐esteem and their relationship with anger expression and psychological health

Two studies investigated how discrepancies between implicit and explicit self‐esteem are related to mental and physical health. We found that, compared to congruent self‐esteem, discrepant self‐esteem was related to more anger suppression, a more depressive attributional style, more nervousness, and more days of impaired health. The result applies not only to fragile (high explicit, low implicit) self‐esteem, but also to damaged (low explicit, high implicit) self‐esteem. These findings show that high implicit self‐esteem is not necessarily advantageous. In individuals with low explicit self‐esteem having high implicit self‐esteem was related to more health problems than having low implicit self‐esteem. Taken together the results suggest that discrepancies between implicit and explicit SE are detrimental to mental and physical health. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.