Unconscious self-esteem study. Psychologists define implicit self-esteem as unconscious evaluations of one's worth or value. In contrast, explicit self-esteem refers to the extent to which a person consciously considers oneself as valuable and worthy.

An article published in the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis (March 2006) investigated whether implicit self-esteem is really unconscious. A sample of 257 college undergraduate students completed a questionnaire designed to measure implicit self-esteem and explicit self-esteem. Thus, an implicit selfesteem score (x₁) and explicit self-esteem score (x₂) was obtained for each. (Note: Higher scores indicate higher levels of self-esteem.) Also, a second questionnaire was administered in order to obtain each subject's estimate of their level of implicit self-esteem. This was called estimated implicit self-esteem (x₃). Finally, the researchers computed two measures of accuracy in estimating implicit self-esteem: y₁ = (x₃ - x₁) and y₂ = |x₃ - x₁|.

(a) The researchers fit the interaction model, E(y₁) = β₀ + β₁x₁ + β₂x₂ + β₃x₁x₂. The ttest on the interaction term, β₃, was ''nonsignificant'' with a p-value > .10. However, both t-tests on β₁ and β₂ were statistically significant (p-value

(b) The researchers also fit the interaction model, E(y₂) = β₀ + β₁x₁ + β₂x₂ + β₃x₁x₂. The t-test on the interaction term, β₃, was ''significant'' with a p-value.