High self-perceived social competence in rejected children is related to frequent fighting

High levels of aggression have long been assumed to be related to low self-esteem. Empirical studies have, however, never demonstrated any relation between low self-esteem and aggressive behaviour. Recently Baumeister and colleagues (1996) proposed that aggressive behaviour does not result from low, but from unrealistically high self-esteem. They expect aggressive behaviour to occur when an unrealistically positive evaluation of oneself is disputed or threatened by others. In the present study Baumeister's proposition was tested for the domain of social acceptance in 179 third- and fourth-grade children. Self-esteem in the social domain was operationalized as self-perceived social competence, while threats to high self-perceived social competence were operationalized as rejection by peers. Participants completed the Dutch version of the Self-Perception Profile for Children and sociometric ratings of (dis)likeability and aggressiveness. Three rival hypotheses were tested: (1) the traditional hypothesis that aggressive behaviour is associated with low self-perceived competence; (2) the simplified hypothesis that aggressive behaviour is associated with high self-perceived competence; and (3) Baumeister's original hypothesis that aggressive behaviour is related to high self-perceived competence only when the latter is combined with less-favourable judgments from others. No support was found for the traditional hypothesis. Baumeister's original hypothesis was supported and explained more variance in aggressive behaviour than the simplified hypothesis.