title: Self-esteem and "if . . . then" contingencies of interpersonal acceptance.
abstract: The degree to which an individual perceives interpersonal acceptance as being contingent on successes and failures, versus relatively unconditional, is an important factor in the social construction of self-esteem. The authors used a lexical-decision task to examine people's "if. . . then" expectancies. On each trial, participants were shown a success or failure context word and then they made a word-nonword judgment on a second letter string, which sometimes was a target word relating to interpersonal outcomes. For low-self-esteem participants, success and failure contexts facilitated the processing of acceptance and rejection target words, respectively, revealing associations between performance and social outcomes. Study 2 ruled out a simple valence-congruency explanation. Study 3 demonstrated that the reaction-time pattern was stronger for people who had recently been primed with a highly contingent relationship, as opposed to one based more on unconditional acceptance. These results contribute to a social-cognitive formulation of the role of relational schemas in the social construction of self-esteem.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. baldwin@uwinnipeg.ca
authors.forename: M W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Baldwin
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sinclair
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001244:Association; D019336:Cognitive Science; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D011930:Reaction Time; D012649:Self Concept; D012938:Social Perception