The balance between admiration and threat determines whether closeness boosts self-esteem – or undermines it.

Content warning

• relationship dynamics
• self worth

The short story

For Svenja, it was a day like any other. Early in the morning, she already spent some time trying to anticipate how Peter would be feeling and preparing herself for it as best she could.

Svenja often had to put up with Peter’s bad mood when he came home, didn’t speak a word and switched, straight from his bike – which had carried him, more or less, through the big city with its chronic traffic jams – into his running shoes to go for an hour’s run by the nearby river. Svenja, aged 25, was studying for a Master’s degree in Psychology at the University of Hamburg and usually reacted with understanding. She had known Peter for five years now; they had only recently moved in together and were now renting a two-bedroom flat in the city centre.

Just four years ago, Peter had been her tutor in statistics, tasked with preparing her for the exam in this much-hated and often perceived as difficult branch of psychology. Svenja, too, had struggled to learn and apply the many statistical formulas. To put it simply: she wasn’t really interested in statistics at all. After all, she’d chosen her subject so she could work with people – not with boring numbers. This made her admire Peter all the more, as he knew how to breathe life into statistics. Time and again, he came up with examples from everyday life that made it instantly clear to her and her fellow students what lay behind measures of association and statistical significance.

She was impressed by his calm and confident manner, and Peter was, admittedly, quite attractive. Tall, slim and well-built – which, given his sporting ambitions, came as no surprise at all: just two years ago, Peter had been the Hamburg champion in the 10 km run. Oh, how happy she was when she bumped into Peter outside the lecture theatre one day as he was heading to his bike, and they immediately struck up a casual conversation. Peter seemed to be interested in Svenja, too! Indeed, the first dates followed, and they both soon found themselves wanting to spend much more time together.

In short: Svenja and Peter became a couple. Whilst Svenja continued to regard statistics as a necessary evil of her degree course, she also enjoyed the admiration of her fellow students: her and the smart statistics expert. Full of pride and self-confidence, she now walked into the university’s seminar rooms, even when the subject was statistics and methodology.

It was only gradually that she began to notice a certain moodiness in her boyfriend. Peter would sometimes seem so strangely quiet and pensive, almost a bit eerie. But other times he’d be completely euphoric when he went overboard with his thirst for adventure.

And Svenja had recently turned into a real sports enthusiast, having grown increasingly fond of her boyfriend’s long-standing hobby. She was now keeping up with him on her runs to such an extent that, after 5 kilometres, they both crossed the finish line together. Svenja felt she was on the right track to sharing another wonderful common interest with her partner. This made her all the more puzzled by Peter’s repeated bad moods, especially when it came to sports.

But perhaps, as a budding psychologist, she shouldn’t take her personality analyses too far. And so she almost always went along with Peter’s suggestions to escape the daily grind at the weekends and find one or the other thrills out in nature.

Last weekend, for example, the lovely summer weather drew Svenja and Peter out to the lake in the heart of the city early on. A week earlier, Peter had stowed two huge stand-up paddleboards in the block’s underground car park; he’d bought them at a bargain price during a special offer week at the local craft store. Just half a year ago, whilst on holiday in Egypt, they’d both enthusiastically completed a full course and done very well.

Naturally, this was now the perfect opportunity to demonstrate their newly acquired skills in local water.

“What on earth have you actually retained from our course?”, Peter’s question, just before they set off on their new boards, gave Svenja pause for thought.

“I suppose just as much as you”, she tried to retort straight away, but this only provoked criticism and rebukes from her boyfriend.

“It’s just that over the last few weeks, I haven’t noticed one bit that you’re still even interested in the topic of SUP. I ended up watching that YouTube video on warm-up exercises for stand-up paddlers all on my own whilst you were chatting away on the phone with your girlfriend.”

Such cold comments unsettled Svenja. Peter was treating her like a schoolgirl again and questioning her abilities, even though the SUP instructor in Egypt had praised them both equally. And Svenja, too, had the impression that they were both performing at the same level. It was actually quite nice, especially as they both enjoyed stand-up paddling so much.

What was the point of Peter’s condescending remark?

As always, Svenja didn’t dare to argue back, but her enjoyment of the trip out on the water had largely been spoiled.

Peter also voiced his objections to Svenja’s behaviour whilst on the board. Sometimes he criticised his girlfriend’s foot position, other times her lack of speed on the water: “That’s how you lose your balance and end up falling in straight away…”

Was he perhaps trying to provoke a fall so he could present himself as the better athlete afterwards?

Svenja didn’t want to dwell on that thought at all. Peter, on the other hand, met up with friends for a beer that evening and raved: “Great SUP trip today – at least for me. Svenja needed a bit of help, of course. That was a close call.”

This story was originally written in German and translated to English by Helena Hartmann using DeepL. It was written without any help of AI.

The study

Tesser, A. (1988). Toward a self-evaluation maintenance model of social behavior. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 21. Social psychological studies of the self: Perspectives and programs (pp. 181–227). Academic Press. (https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60227-0)[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/200008925_Toward_a_Self-Evaluation_Maintenance_Model_of_Social_Behavior]

Connection between story and study

Tesser & Smith (in: Tesser, 1988) conducted an experiment to investigate the conditions under which people promote or hinder a friend’s success, depending on how important the relevant area of performance is to their own self-image.

Participants each brought a friend with them to the laboratory. In a word-guessing task, they were able to influence how well a friend or a stranger performed by providing simple or difficult clues. In one condition, the task was presented as important for their own abilities (in this case, leadership skills = high relevance). In the other condition, the task was presented as irrelevant to their personal competencies (leadership skills = low relevance).

When relevance was low, the participants helped their friend more than a stranger in 10 out of 13 sessions. When relevance was high, they helped the stranger more than their friend in 10 out of 13 sessions. These patterns of results correspond exactly to the predictions of the so-called ‘Self-Evaluation Maintenance’ (SEM) model.

In the short story, Peter is the recognised statistics expert and clearly relishes his ability and role. A romantic relationship develops between him and Svenja. Despite their mutual affection, Svenja’s interest in statistics remains minimal. However, in the university lecture theatre, she stands proudly and confidently alongside Peter. In short, she basks in the glory of her boyfriend’s fame, which boosts her self-esteem given the low relevance of the subject ‘statistics’. This so-called ‘basking in reflected glory’ (BIRG) is a frequently replicated phenomenon within the SEM theory.

Of course, things take a completely different turn for our couple when it comes to sporting activities, such as running or ‘stand-up paddleboarding’. What used to be Peter’s domain is now of great importance to both of them. As Svenja has evidently, through sustained effort, reached a level where she is on a par with Peter, he feels his self-esteem is under threat in this area and downplays his girlfriend’s abilities. In specific cases, this can go as far as actively hindering one’s partner or even reducing the interpersonal closeness that has developed, in order to minimise the influence of the person being compared with one’s own self. This has been demonstrated by follow-up studies (e.g. Beach & Tesser, 1995 and Nicholls & Stukas, 2011).

The author

Norbert holds a degree in psychology and is now a freelance writer. Parts of the short story are taken from his psychological crime novel “Retter – Der Tote an der Alster”. Norbert has a background in research and teaching at the universities of Kiel and Umeå (Sweden), as well as over 30 years of experience in vocational aptitude assessment for the Federal Employment Agency in Hamburg and Nuremberg.