Explicit self-esteem and contingencies of self-worth: The moderating role of implicit self-esteem

•ISE moderates the relations between ESE and CSW.•ESE is positively associated with family support CSW only if the ISE is high.•Information from domains of CSW is processed differently, depending on the ISE.•The interaction between ISE and ESE should be considered in research and practice.

Among the contemporary approaches of self-esteem, the dual-process model and the contingencies of self-worth model have been linked to similar phenomena like narcissism, perfectionism or negative emotions. The present studies aimed to investigate the way in which implicit self-esteem can moderate the relations between explicit self-esteem and particular contingencies of self-worth. In Study 1, we found that implicit self-esteem moderates the relation of explicit self-esteem with academic competencies and family support. In Study 2, the data supported the same moderating role of implicit self-esteem in the relation between explicit self-esteem and family support, while showing that implicit self-esteem also moderates the relation between explicit self-esteem and virtue. Since we used two different ways to assess self-esteem, the converging results from the two studies can be considered to be particularly robust.