ABSTRACT
The reaction to exaggerated self-importance has been interpreted in part as the reflection of a validation process in which an individual forms an evaluation of another person, which corresponds to what he defines as the valid or true worth of that person. An experiment was designed to check the implication of the validation hypothesis. The different experimental conditions involving self-depreciation and boastfulness were created by way of the interviewer's interpolated remarks. When the interviewer expresses a self-evaluation, which is higher than the estimate of his worth provided by his low professional status, the evaluation of him is significantly lower than when his self-evaluation more closely corresponds to his status. The High-Status interviewer, who is self-depreciating is considerably more attractive, in terms of frequency of positive evaluations, than the immodest interviewer of High Status. The interviewer is also less negative in terms of qualitative evaluations, although not significantly so.
