If you are not prepared to be wrong, then your self-serving biases are simply not enough. Relationships between self-serving biases and discrepant self-esteem.
Previous research has demonstrated that individuals with discrepant (fragile: high explicit and low implicit, or damaged: high implicit and low explicit) self-esteem are more likely to engage in defensive mechanisms than individuals with consistent implicit and explicit self-esteem. With two studies, we investigated the relationship between implicit and explicit self-esteem, and three defensive strategies for the threat of failure: subjective overachievement, psychological disengagement, and retroactive excuses. In Study 1 (N = 176), fragile self-esteem was associated with subjective overachievement, and low implicit self-esteem was associated with psychological disengagement. In Study 2 (N = 101), damaged self-esteem was related to increased use of retroactive excuses as a form of self-serving bias. These results add to the growing body of evidence documenting the maladaptive nature of fragile and damaged self-esteem.