A dissociation in judgements of confidence in people with dandruff based on self-reports compared to reports from other observers

Objective: It is not clear how well evaluations made by other people correspond with self-evaluations of esteem or confidence. To address this question, we compared measurements of confidence in participants with and without dandruff.

Methods: Participants with dandruff were significantly different from healthy control participants on a quality of life measure of scalp dermatitis, but not on self-evaluations of esteem or confidence. To determine whether there were differences in the evaluation of confidence by others, both groups of participants were videoed while they prepared for or gave a presentation in an interview scenario.

Results: Raters, who were unfamiliar with the identities of the participants, evaluated confidence from the muted videos. In contrast to their self-evaluations, male participants with dandruff were rated as having lower confidence compared to participants who reported a healthy scalp.

Conclusions: These findings reveal a difference between explicit and implicit measures of self-esteem in men compared to women with dandruff.