That it was people with a grandiose view of themselves who strike out. In other words, Baumeister and his colleague Brad J. Bushman discovered what depressed people had known all along. If you tell a person with low self-esteem “You suck,” they say “You’re right,” and roll back under the covers. It’s the esteem-bloated person, who has enough belief in himself to classify such an insult as untrue, who bothers striking back.
