Self-esteem experience in everyday life: An examination from the viewpoint of “locus of reality”

Interviews with 57 college students were conducted. In order to investigate how they experienced “confidence” or “pride” in everyday life. The framework of the study was “locus of reality”, which was the degree that reality was felt inside self as opposed to in others. Results showed that the subjects tended to become conscious of themselves when they were to share information about situations with others. Also, locus of reality had a relative tendency to oscillate between self and others. Moreover, differences were found for mental experiences ascribed for themselves and others, even when the same words were used for both. The experiences of “confidence” and “no-confidence” were characteristically asymmetrical in the feeling of reality. “Pride” was different from “confidence”, in that the former was associated more with experiences that had defensive connotations. These results suggested that people might have a tendency not to differentiate interpretation processes of their own from others.