1. virtue
2. God’s love
3. support of family
4. academic competence
5. physical attractiveness
6. gaining others' approval

Individuals who base their self-worth in a specific domain (such as, for example, academic success) leave themselves much more vulnerable to having their self-esteem threatened when negative events happen to them within that domain (such as when they fail a test at school).

Some research has shown that external contingencies of self-worth, such as physical appearance and academic success, correlate negatively to well-being, even promoting depression and eating-disorders (Jambekar, Quinn, & Crocker, 2001).

Other work has found internal contingencies, on the other hand, unrelated or even positively related to well-being (Sargent, Crocker, & Luhtanen, 2006).

Research by Crocker and her colleagues also suggests that contingencies of self-worth have self-regulatory properties (Crocker, Luhtanen, Cooper, & Bouvrette, 2003). Crocker et al. define successful self-regulation as “the willingness to exert effort toward one’s most important goals, while taking setbacks and failures as opportunities to learn, identify weaknesses and address them, and develop new strategies toward achieving those goals” (Crocker, Brook, & Niiya, 2006).

Since many individuals strive for a feeling of worthiness, it makes sense that those people would experience special motivation to succeed and actively to avoid failure in the domains on which they base their own self-worth.

Accordingly, successful self-regulation can prove difficult for people aiming to maintain and enhance their self-esteem, because they would have to actually embrace failure or criticism as a learning-opportunity, rather than avoid it.

Instead, when a task which individuals see as fundamental to their self-worth proves difficult and failure seems probable, contingencies of self-worth lead to stress, feelings of pressure, and a loss of intrinsic motivation.

On the other hand, the positive emotional affect following success in a domain of contingency may become addictive for the highly contingent individual (Baumeister & Vohs, 2001). Over time, these people may require even greater successes to achieve the same satisfaction or emotional “high”.

Therefore, the goal to succeed can become a relentless quest for these individuals (Crocker & Nuer, 2004).

In these cases, highly contingent people may withdraw from the situation.