Abstract
Korman's (1970) argument that self-esteem moderates the relationships between job satisfaction and perceived need-fulfilment and between job satisfaction and the extent to which one's job meets with group approval was tested with 120 Coloured South African factory workers who were given the Porter need-fulfilment questionnaire, 2 measures of job satisfaction, and 3 measures of self-esteem, and for whom a measure of the extent to which their jobs were found desirable by others was available. The correlations between job satisfaction and need-fulfilment and between job satisfaction and group approval did not differ significantly between Ss who obtained high and low scores on each of the self-esteem measures. The negative results are explained in terms of weaknesses in the balance and dissonance models from which Korman's argument is derived.