The Impact Of Trait Self-esteem On The Illusion Of Transparency:

People’s tendency to overestimate the extent to which others can discern their internal statesis defined as the illusion of transparency. A lot of researches have shown that the illusion oftransparency exists extensively in interpersonal interactions. People can be affected byself-perception easily when they stand in others’ standpoint to judge others’ perceptions of theirown information, which leads to self-centered judgment and forms the illusion of transparency.Individual’s self-perception exerts a tremendous influence on the illusion. Trait self-esteem is animportant factor in affecting people’s self-perception, however, previous studies have not gotinvolved in finding out how people’s levels of trait self-esteem influence their illusions oftransparency. Therefore, this study investigated the influence that trait self-esteem on the illusionof transparency, and at the same, explores the impact that trait self-esteem has on the illusion oftransparency under the situation of social appraisal.This study can be divided into two parts containing five experiments, which systematicallyexamines the effects that trait self-esteem has on the illusion of transparency, as well as exploresthe effects under the condition of both high and low social evaluations. The main conclusions areas follows:1. Individuals’ trait self-esteem is a significant predictor of their illusion of transparencylevels, which functions mainly through the elements of self-competence.2. Under the hidden condition, people’s self-esteem negatively predicts their illusions oftransparency, that is, the lower people’s self-esteem levels are, the higher their illusion levels willbe. Under the conditions of both high and low social evaluations, the illusions of low-esteemindividuals rank higher than those of high-esteem individuals. There is a difference in lowself-esteem individuals’ levels of illusion of transparency under the two evaluation conditions,which is their illusion levels rank higher under the high social evaluation condition compared with the low one. However, there is no difference of high self-esteem individuals’ illusion levelsunder the two distinct social evaluation conditions.3. Under the condition of conveying, people’s self-esteem positively predicts their illusionof transparency levels, that is, the higher the levels of individual’s self-esteem are, the highertheir illusion levels will be. Under both the high and low social evaluation conditions, theillusion levels of those with high self-esteem are higher than those with low self-esteem. Andindividuals’ illusion levels under low social evaluation condition are higher than those underhigh condition.