Self theories in Personality: lecture 1 Flashcards
Joanne wood et al.
wondered whether success might cause low self-esteem folks to feel anxiety and self-doubt
Joanne wood et al.
study 1: researchers had both LSE’s and HSE’s engage in six ostensible tests of intellectual ability. A randomly determined half of these subjects received unambiguous success-feedback on these tasks. The other half received no feedback on their task performance. then completed a number of measures of their self thoughts, mood, and anxiety
Results: robust tendency for success to increased the anxiety of LSE’s but not HSE’s. relative to their no feedback counterparts, successful LSE “could feel themselves trembling,” felt “keyed up,” and reported a “need to calm down”
Joanne wood et al.
study 2: same as study 1, except that following the success, no feedback manipulation, subjects wrote down as many self thoughts as they had in the situation and recalled previous experiences involving cognitive abilities and reported expectations for future performance on tests of cognitive abilities
Results: For LSE’s success
1. increased anxiety
2. decreased the number of positive memories they could retrieve about performances in similar situations
3. did not increase expectations for future success or the number of positive self-thoughts they had about themselves
Joanne wood et al.
study 3: LSE and HSE subjects were randomly assigned to imagine and describe either a positive and negative event. Some subjects were asked to imagine and describe academic events and others were asked to imagine and describe “romantic” events. Subjects were asked to provide their emotional reactions to the events. Descriptions were coded for the number of favorable/unfavorable mentions of self and the positivity/negativity of the described
Results: in their descriptions of positive events (e.g. acing test or falling in love) LSE’s anticipated more anxiety, and made more negative statements about both the self and the event
Wood et al. suggest LSE’s revel in success when…
they feel that their chances of success are secure
Brown and Dutton definitions of self-esteem
a capacity to maintain or restore momentary feelings of self-worth
Brown and Dutton
study 1 & 2: HSE’s and LSE’s were randomly assigned to success and failure conditions on an interesting test of cognitive ability (remote associations test). This test provides 3 words that subjects have to chose a word that relates to all 3
*randomly assigned hard words to one group and easy words to another
* researchers assessed subjects feelings of self-worth by asking them to rte how proud, pleased with themselves, ashamed, and humiliated they were following the tast
Results: feelings of self worth lower in failure than success condition among LSE’s but not HSE’s
* LSE’s tended to assume that they failed because they were stupid, whereas HSE’s did not
High self-esteem
receive a global, undiluted, unambiguous emotional and confidence boost from success
*it makes them feel proud, confident, and calm
*relatively unaffected by failure- it tends not to adversely affect their confidence or self-feelings
Low self-esteem
are ambivalent about success. It makes them feel proud but anxious. It doesn’t improve self confidence
* can be emotionally devastated by failure. It can impair their confidence and damage their self-feelings
self-esteem and positive self-affirmations
study 1: both HSE and LSE subjects either made no self-statements, or said “I am a lovable person” every 15 seconds for 4 minutes. following this time period, several mood measures were taken
Results: saying the affirmation marginally improved the moods of HSE subjects, but caused the moods of LSE subjects to plummet significantly below their control group
self-esteem and positive self-affirmations
study 2: both HSE and LSE subjects focused on “I am a lovable person” statement. One group focused on how it was true and the other focused on how it may or may not be true
Results: did not affect the mood and self-feelings of HSE subjects. However being forced to focus on how the statement was true of them lowered the moods and self-feelings of the LSE group
Marigold et al.
*LSE’s generally responded well to negative-validation support and poorly to positive-reframing
*HSE’s benefited from both validation and reframing
*folks tend to want to positively reframe LSE’s stressful experiences even though they know it wont help. Also tend to provide negative-validation support for HSE’s
Roy Baumeister et al.
HSE
represent a self-aggrandizing, risky interpersonal style
Roy Baumeister et al.
LSE
represent a self-protective, conservative interpersonal style
