Implicit self-esteem? : What do you mean?

"Implicit self-esteem" (ISE) is a prominent area of research in implicit cognition, gaining popularity due to its intuitive appeal and broad applicability in overcoming challenges in measuring self-esteem. However, the current state of ISE research faces issues with diverse and vague definitions, as well as measures exhibiting poor psychometric properties. This dissertation provides an overview of self-esteem, highlights challenges in its measurement, and traces the evolution of ISE. It identifies two potential reasons for poor-quality ISE measures: contamination with irrelevant variance and misconceptualization of ISE in long-term memory. To address these issues and develop a valid ISE measure, the dissertation presents four empirical chapters leveraging recent methodological and theoretical advances. Chapter 2 refines the validity of the Implicit Association Test for self-esteem. Chapter 3 attempts to replicate a study using an error-based priming paradigm to explain reactions to failure. Chapter 4 proposes a new ISE measure based on propositional models of implicit evaluation and tests its psychometric properties. Chapter 5 investigates the causal link between propositional self-evaluations and affect in an experimental design. The results suggest that measures based on the associative model may not adequately capture automatic self-evaluations, while those assessing spontaneous truth-evaluation show more promise, albeit with incremental links to adverse self-esteem correlates. Reflecting on these findings, their limitations, and the state of ISE research, the author proposes a more rigorous redefinition of ISE and advocates for a stringent research agenda in future studies.