Young people crave boosts to their egos more than they crave sex, money or drinking, according to a study from scientists at Ohio State University and Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.

The researchers conducted two experiments on more than 280 students at the University of Michigan for the study, which was published Dec. 1 in the Journal of Personality’s website. Researchers asked the participants how much they liked and wanted different rewards, including eating their favorite food, engaging in sexual activity, getting a good grade and receiving a paycheck, said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State.

The studies revealed that participants valued self-esteem boosters, such as receiving a compliment or scoring high on an exam, more than the other pleasurable experiences, Bushman said.

‘We were shocked that self-esteem trumps all these other rewards,’ Bushman said. ‘We knew college students value self-esteem, but we had no idea how much value was actually put on it.’

In the first study, he said participants were evaluated for the traits of entitlement, a component of self-esteem in which a person feels he or she is more deserving than others. Bushman said students completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a tool used by social psychologists to measure how selfish a person is.

Participants were then asked how much they liked or wanted different things, such as sex and food, because one sign of addiction is that a person wants something more than he or she likes it, Bushman said.

‘If you look at self-esteem scores over time, they have gotten higher and higher,’ he said. ‘College students have higher self-esteem scores than in the past. There is a self-esteem movement in this country.’

Despite the growing number of Americans who score high on measures of the trait, it would be incorrect to imply that the students in this study are addicted to self-esteem, he said. They were just closer to being addicted to it than any of the other activity choices in the study, Bushman said.

He said students with high entitlement scores wanted all the rewards, including self-esteem boosters, more than they actually liked them.

A person with high entitlement, for example, would be more likely to agree with statements such as ‘if I ruled the world, it would be a better place,’ rather than ‘the thought of ruling the world frightens the hell out of me,’ according to the study.

Both studies found that participants who placed higher value on elevating their self-esteem than on their favorite food or their next paycheck also displayed a strong affinity for self-esteem boosters in a laboratory setting.

Bushman and his colleagues administered a timed test that measured participants’ intellectual ability. After the test, students were then asked if they would wait an extra 10 minutes to have their test rescored using a new procedure that usually produces higher scores, Bushman said.

The fact that students were willing to give up their time to wait for a potentially higher grade is very telling, Bushman said.

Leonard Newman, a psychology professor at SU, said that although the study shows that people are motivated by more than concrete things like sex, money and food, it would be incorrect to say that self-esteem trumps all other rewards in every situation. If someone just lost his or her house or job, money would probably be of greater concern than boosting his or her self-esteem, he said.

Newman also said self-esteem boosters might be more important to college students than to older individuals.

‘Young adults are still finding themselves,’ Newman said. ‘Their sense of self isn’t quite established, so it would make sense that they would strongly focus on boosts to their self-esteem.’

Elizabeth Welsh, a junior magazine journalism major, said she appreciates a compliment more than her favorite food or money because it’s less immediate.

‘It’s so easy to go to the vending machine for a snack or draw out money from the ATM,’ she said. ‘But a compliment is usually unexpected and harder to come by.’

vdnapoli@syr.edu

Published on January 24, 2011 at 12:00 pm