Previous studies have shown that people committing social blunders anticipate being judged more harshly by others than they actually are.Because self-esteem reflects the feeling that the person expects to be accepted by others,it was hypothesized that the overestimation bias would be moderated by individual differences in trait self-esteem.Female undergraduates(n=118)considered two hypothetical scenarios.In the actor condition,participants were asked to imagine that they had committed a social blunder and anticipate how negatively observers would judge them.In the observer and the third person conditions,participants imagined watching someone else commit a blunder.Participants in the observer condition judged those actors.Participants in the third person condition anticipated how negatively observers would judge those actors.Results indicated that participants in the actor condition anticipated that they would be evaluated more negatively compared to the judgments by participants in the observer and the third person conditions.In the actor condition,people with low self-esteem overestimated others\u27negative evaluation compared to those with high self-esteem.The implication of these findings for social interactions and the limitation of the present study are discussed
