The nature of equity-restoration: Some approval-seeking considerations

Subjects performed a proofreading task and evaluated its difficulty both beforehand and afterwards. They were overpaid or equitably paid by an experimenter who was or was not directly responsible for the level of pay they received, and who they believed would or would not see their post-test ratings. All subjects knew the experimenter would grade their task performance. Consistent with equity theory, overpaid subjects rated the task as having been more difficult than they had expected and did higher quality work than did equitably paid subjects. However, subjects who thought the experimenter would see their ratings (Aware condition) rated it as more difficult and performed more poorly on it than those who thought she would not see them (Unaware condition). Reported task difficulty increased among overpaid subjects under aware conditions, remained stable among overpaid subjects under unaware conditions, and decreased for equitably paid subjects. These findings suggested that what appears to be “equity-restoration” may be a self-presentation strategy designed to win the experimenter's approval, and that task ratings rather than performance will be used for this purpose when they can be communicated to the experimenter. The experimenter's responsibility for the subject's pay had no effect in the present study.     

When Audience Presence Is Enjoyable: The Influence of Audience Awareness of Prior Success on Performance and Task Interest

Subjects received positive feedback on a practice anagram task and then performed a similar task in front of either an audience that was aware of their prior success or an audience that was unaware of their prior success. Two control conditions were included in which subjects performed alone after receiving positive feedback or performed alone without feedback. Results indicated subjects' task interest and performance increased under conditions in which they performed in front of unaware audiences. In addition, subjects' task interest and performance levels decreased in the presence of audiences that were aware of their prior success. These results point to an important role of audience awareness in setting performance standards and expectations. These findings are interpreted from a resource-investment analysis of task value and performance. Implications for surveillance in public settings and in the workplace (e.g., automated computer monitoring) are discussed.     

Locus of control and the effects of success and failure in young and community-residing aged women1

A study was conducted to examine reactions to success and failure in young and elderly subjects. Young and aged women, previously classified as internals or externals according to scores on a version of Rotter's (1966) Locus of Control Scale, were asked to work on cognitive problems while listening to bursts of noise. Two experimental conditions were created. One group (perceived success) was led to believe they were successfully avoiding bursts of noise by correctly solving the problems. A second group (perceived failure) believed they were unsuccessful at the problems and not avoiding noises. To test the generality of the effects of the treatments, subsequent performance was assessed on first, a similar task administered by the original experimenter, and secondly, on a dissimilar task given by a different experimenter in another setting. Results on a similar task indicated that subjects showed poor performance following failure regardless of age or locus of control classification. However, internals performed better than externals after both success and failure treatments. Testing the generality of these effects with a dissimilar task, results indicated that externals tended to perform somewhat more poorly after failure and internals somewhat better after failure. However, these I-E differences in reactions to success and failure were largely due to the elderly group, and old-externals showed the poorest performance after failure. The results were interpreted in terms of the particular importance of locus of control as a determinant of adaptability to stress in the elderly.     

Increased performance with increased personal control: A self-presentation interpretation

Past research has found that allowing people a choice of task materials sometimes increases performance on the task. A self-presentation interpretation for this effect was tested and supported in two experiments. In Experiment 1, subjects performed better on a paired-associate learning task when allowed to select some of the words for the test, but only when they believed the experimenter would know of their choice and their performance. In Experiment 2, subjects performed better on what they believed was a cognitive abilities test when allowed to select the test, but again only when they believed their performance would be known by those who were aware of the choice. It was concluded that providing increased control over a task often results in increased concern for self-presentation that may lead to a better performance on the task.     

Psychological Sequelae of Avoiding HIV-Serostatus Information

The psychological sequelae of choosing to learn or not to learn one's HIV serostatus were examined in a group of 224 men who had been tested for HIV. Correlates of this avoidance were measured (a) when both groups had been tested and given the opportunity to receive the test results, and (b) after the group that initially chose to avoid HIV-serostatus information had learned their test results (and an equivalent time point for those who had already learned their HIV serostatus). Results indicate that those who kept themselves unaware of their serostatus had AIDS-related worries and concerns significantly higher than individuals aware that they were HIV seronegative and equivalent to individuals aware that they were HIV seropositive, at the first time point. Thus, unaware seronegative men suffered unnecessary worries and concerns. Both HIV-seropositive and HIV-seronegative men who were initially unaware showed a decline in mood disturbance on learning their HIV status. These findings suggest that learning threatening information may be more psychologically beneficial than avoiding it.     

Affective state mediates causal attributions for success and failure

The influence of affect on causal attributions for success and failure was examined in this experiment. A positive, neurtral, or negative mood was induced in subjects who then learned they had either succeeded or failed an aptitude test taken previously. Relative to neutral mood control conditions, subjects in both positive and negative mood conditions showed a pronounced self-serving bias, particularly following success. The finding is interpreted as self-regulation of affective state. Specifically, causal attribution of success to internal factors can sustain or enhance positive affect; attribution of failure to external factors can diminish negative affect. Ancillary analyses corroborated this interpretation.     

The Impact of Social Comparisons After Failure: The Moderating Effects of Perceived Control

It was proposed that the impact of upward and downward social comparisons on affect and behavior following failure is moderated by perceived control. Subjects who failed an initial test were led to believe that it was either possible or impossible to improve performance on a second test and were exposed to information indicating that others either had done better or had done worse on the first test. As predicted, those who believed that they had little control over their subsequent outcomes and who were exposed to upward comparisons reported greater depressive and hostile affect and persisted less on the second task relative to other subjects. In addition, subjects who had low perceived control showed more interest in additional comparison information when they believed that others had done worse than when they believed that others had done better. Those who believed that they had high control did not show this preference. Findings suggest that upward comparison is debilitating only when accompanied by low perceived control. Further, exposure to downward comparison information may prevent some of the negative effects that have previously been associated with low personal control.     

Do people with low self-esteem really want to feel better? Self-esteem differences in motivation to repair negative moods.

This research examined the hypothesis that people with low self-esteem (LSE) are less motivated than people with high self-esteem (HSE) to repair their negative moods. In Study 1, participants completed diaries in response to either a success or a failure in their everyday lives. Participants described what they intended to do next and the reasons behind those plans. After failure, fewer LSE than HSE participants expressed a goal to improve their mood. A follow-up investigation (Study 2) suggested that this difference was not due to a self-esteem difference in knowledge of mood repair strategies. In Study 3, after undergoing a negative mood induction, fewer LSE than HSE participants chose to watch a comedy video, even though both groups believed the comedy video would make them happy. Studies 4 and 5 explored possible reasons why LSE people are less motivated than HSE people to repair their negative moods.     

Locus of control of reinforcement and responsiveness to social influence

In this study, the “control of reinforcement” dimension was used to generate differential predictions about subject responsiveness to subtle social influence and experimenter effectiveness in producing change in verbal behavior As predicted, “external” control subjects, selectively reinforced in a sentence construction task, evidenced significantly greater performance gains than “internal” subjects When reports of awareness were used to further subdivide subjects, it was found that aware externals accounted for the conditioning effect whereas aware internals, unaware subjects, and controls were comparable and showed essentially no change in performance These differences were interpreted as being due to the internal's resistiveness to subtle forms of influence. The anticipated experimenter effect was nonsignificant Consideration of the control of reinforcement dimension as an important determinant of responsiveness to social influence in certain situations was emphasized     

Involuntary aware memory enhances priming on a conceptual implicit memory task

This study investigated the role of involuntary aware memory (phenomenological awareness of the study episode) on a conceptual implicit memory task. Subjects studied words under levels of processing conditions (LOP: nonsemantic vs. semantic) and then received a category exemplar generation priming task. Subjects were either aware or unaware of the study test relationship. Subjects who were study test aware showed more priming for semantic study than subjects who were study test unaware, thus producing an LOP dissociation between them. The findings suggest that involuntary aware memory can enhance performance on conceptual implicit memory tasks, thus having theoretical implications for implicit and explicit memory.     

Helping behavior following a failure experience1

Abstract: A study was conducted to reconcile two conflicting models on the relationship of shame to helping. According to the negative-mood relief model, ashamed people try to help others to relieve a negative mood induced by a shameful experience. The self-esteem maintenance model suggests, however, that people whose self-esteem is threatened utilize helping behavior instrumentally to restore self-esteem. In the present study, 84 male subjects took an alleged intelligence test and received fictitious poor results, and in the next experimental stage, set up by a male experimenter who was not an observer of the subject's failure in the former stage, they were requested to help a person also unaware of subject's failure. On the basis of this paradigm for the shame-helping relation, the “ability” of the target person compared to the subject (superior vs. inferior) and the content of helping (meaningful vs. not meaningful) were manipulated. One level of each experimental variable was supposed to serve as an obstacle to maintaining self-esteem. Besides this 2 times 2 factorial design, subjects were classified as high or low in self-esteem; a control condition (with 16 subjects) was also included. The results provided unequivocal support for the self-esteem maintenance model: ashamed subjects were helpful only in the inferior-target/meaningful-help condition. This result did not interact with the relative levels of self-esteem; the lack of this interaction is explained in terms of self-esteem being trait.     

Mood and memory: Mood-congruity effects in absence of mood

Themood-congruity effect refers to facilitated processing of information when the affective valence of this information is congruent with the subject’s mood. In this paper we argue that mood may be a sufficient but not a necessary condition to produce the mood-congruity effect of selective learning. Two experiments are presented in which subjects learned lists of words with neutral, positive, and negative affective valences. In the learning task the subjects were instructed to behave as if they were depressed or happy. The mood-congruity effect was indeed obtained. The effect was stronger with subjects who “predicted” the relationship between mood and affective word valence than with subjects who were unaware of this relationship. The results are not simply attributed to task demands, but are interpreted in terms of a model of cognitive processes and people’s knowledge about mood states.     

Personal,Interpersonal, and Situational Influences on Behavioral Self-Handicapping

ABSTRACT

This study explored the combined effects of personal factors (participant sex), interpersonal factors (experimenter sex), and situational factors (performance feedback) on two forms of behavioral self-handicapping. Participants received non-contingent success or failure feedback concerning their performance on a novel ability and were given the opportunity to self-handicap before performing again. Behavioral self-handicapping took the form of (a) exerting less practice effort (practice) or (b) choosing a performance-debilitating tape (choice). Men practiced least after failure feedback and chose a debilitating tape if they were interacting with a female experimenter. Generally, across all participants in both choice and practice conditions, high performance concern and the presence of a male experimenter led to the most self-handicapping. Results are interpreted in terms of self-presentational concerns that emphasize a desire to impress or an awareness of the female or male experimenter's acceptance of self-handicappers.     

Reactions to success and failure in public and in private conditions

It was shown that the reaction to success and failure differs when it is communicated publicly or privately and when the reaction to success and failure is measured publicly or privately. Participants took an intelligence test and received fictitious results which were positively or negatively discrepant from the average. The dependent variable was the evaluation of the intelligence test. It was found that when the subject's evaluation of the test was private, the test was evaluated more positively under public than under private success. However, it was evaluated more negatively under public than under private failure. Under public success feedback the test was evaluated more positively under private than under public evaluation, whereas under public failure feedback the effect was reversed. The results are interpreted in terms of a self-presentation model and were discussed in the context of earlier research within the field of interpersonal relations.     

"Eating lightly" and the self-presentation of femininity

In Experiment 1, male and female subjects were given an opportunity to snack as they participated in a "get-acquainted study" with a same-sex or opposite-sex partner (confederate) whose social desirability was manipulated. Consistent with the hypothesis that women may eat less when motivated to present themselves in a feminine light, female subjects ate significantly less with a desirable male partner than in the remaining three conditions. In contrast, male subjects did not eat more (or less) with a desirable woman, although they did show an overall tendency to eat less with female (vs. male) partners. In Experiment 2, female subjects snacked as they got acquainted with a desirable male partner (confederate). Before this interaction, subjects received feedback indicating that they had either very masculine or very feminine interests. In addition, subjects believed either that their male partner was aware of their gender feedback or that he was unaware. Consistent with predictions derived from Schlenker's (1982) analytic-identity theory of social conduct, subjects in the partner-aware conditions ate less when they had received masculine (vs. feminine) feedback, whereas subjects in the partner-unaware conditions ate less when they had received feminine (vs. masculine) feedback. Implications for understanding eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia are discussed.     

Lack of effort as a result of self-focused attention: An attributional ambiguity analysis

Attributional ambiguity is a strategy used to avoid having to attribute potentially negative performance on a task to ability. If the outcome of a task is attributable to ability, if no external cause for failure is available, and if a person is aware that the outcome is attributable to the self, ambiquity can be created with regard to the causation of the outcome. Heightened attribution of an outcome to self, as results from self-focused attention, was expected to produce less effort when external causes for potential failure were explicitly removed. In a 2 × 2 experiment, a positive mood was induced that was then either suggested or excluded as a plausible explanation for potential failure on a task said to be indicative of general intellectual ability. Subjects for whom self-awareness was experimentally induced, and for whom an external attribution of failure was explicitly removed, put significantly less effort into the task. Self-focus, however, has also been shown to enhance task performance. An indirect measure showed increased readiness to perform in direct contrast to the obtained lower self-reports of effort. The range of generalizability and application of attribute ambiguity is discussed.     

Advantages of difficult tasks1

If people work on a hard task before proceeding to one of intermediate difficulty, success will be relevant (predictive of future success) while failure will be irrelevant (not predictive of future failure). However, if they work first on an easy task, success will be irrelevant (not predictive of future success) while failure will be relevant (predictive of future failure). Previous research thus suggests that experience with hard tasks should always lead to more favorable evaluations of one's performance and better future performance than experience with easy tasks. The present study tested these predictions by manipulating initial expectancy (high or low), perceived difficulty of a set of practice problems (practice problems easier, harder, or equal in difficulty to those on a subsequent test), and practice problem feedback (success or failure). As predicted, experience with hard practice problems was most beneficial, regardless of the level of the feedback which students received. This was more true for males than females and for students with high ability than students with low ability.     

内隐自尊的功能:缓冲器,还是滤波器

用内隐联想测验（IAT）测量被试的内隐自尊,通过成败操纵来检验内隐自尊的缓冲器假设。研究发现,无论面对成功反馈还是失败反馈,高内隐自尊者对自己的表现均比较满意,且成功时的满意度显著高于失败时的满意度;低内隐自尊者面对成功时对自己的表现满意,面对失败时对自己的表现不满意,且二者差异显著。这表明内隐自尊可能并非具有缓冲作用,而是具有滤波作用。较之低内隐自尊者,高内隐自尊者在应对压力或威胁时能够更多地过滤负面效应。据此,本文提出了内隐自尊的滤波器假设。     

Expectation of a final cumulative test enhances long-term retention

In the present study, subjects studied lists of words across four experimental conditions: whether (or not) subjects received initial testing for these lists and whether (or not) they were made aware of an upcoming final free-recall test. Initial testing enhanced final-test performance; however, subjects benefited more from initial testing when they also knew they would need to remember the information for a later test. The data suggest that holding an expectation of the final test encouraged the continued processing of study materials following an initial test, affecting the accessibility of these materials at the time of final recall. The results clearly illustrate how an expectation of a cumulative test might influence long-term retention, which may have important implications for educational practice.     

The influence of performance feedback on goal-setting and mental effort regulation

Goal-setting and mental effort investment may be influenced by the perception of success or failure. The aim of the current study was to investigate the dynamics of motivational intensity model using false performance feedback. Forty participants performed a demanding cognitive task over five successive (5 min) blocks. Participants received performance feedback of either progressive success or progressive failure. A number of psychophysiological variables were used to index mental effort investment and emotion, including: HRV components, blood pressure, skin conductance level, EEG, and facial EMG. Subjective estimates of mood, workload and motivation were also collected alongside performance measures. The success group experienced positive affect and a less pronounced decline in subjective motivation in response to a perception of successful achievement. In contrast, feedback of failure led to adverse changes in mood/motivation, but did not lead to the absolute withdrawal of effort, although trends in the psychophysiological data suggest that participants in the failure group were on the verge of abandoning the task. The implications of these findings are discussed within the context of goal-setting and effort regulation models.