Self-esteem,evaluative feedback,and preacquaintance attraction: Indirect reactions to success and failure

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the indirect reactions of high-and low-self-esteem persons to evaluative feedback. Indirect reactions are defined as reactions to evaluative feedback directed toward individuals or mechanisms not associated with the feedback. In each experiment, a sample of college students divided according to level of dispositional self-esteem was provided with feedback on a bogus test of social intelligence. Subjects were informed that each of them had been paired randomly with another person in the session and would interact with that person later in the session. Prior to meeting the individual with whom each ostensibly had been paired, subjects indicated their evaluation of and attraction to those persons. In both experiments a cross-over pattern emerged due to greater attraction following success vs. failure feedback among low-self-esteem subjects and greater attraction following failure vs. success feedback among high-self-esteem subjects. This finding indicates an important new class of reactions to evaluative feedback, indirect reactions, that extends beyond the immediate context in which the feedback is received.Preparation of this article was facilitated by a Summer Faculty Research Fellowship to Rick H. Hoyle from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies at the University of Kentucky.This article is based, in part, on a Master's thesis conducted by Rick H. Hoyle under the supervision of Chester A. Insko. We thank Tom Pyszczynski and John Schopler for helpful advice on the design of the second experiment and Charles Carlson and Monica Harris for helpful comments on a draft of the article.Portions of the research reported in this article were presented at the 94th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 1986; the 58th Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Arlington, Va, 1987; and the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, New York, NY, 1991.     

Physical activity and responses to projective stimuli in neurotic vs. psychotic depression

Responses to projective material by neurotically and psychotically depressed patients were scored for fluency, movement, and primary process during light physical activity and inactivity. A depression measure was also obtained. Significant positive correlations were found between fluency, movement, and primary process. Movement scores did not increase significantly during physical activity for either group. No significant correlations were found between level of depression and production of movement and primary process. However, primary process, controlled for fluency, increased significantly during physical activity for neurotic, but not for psychotic depressives.     

Belief congruence and racial discrimination: Review of the evidence and critical evaluation

A review of the literature pertaining to Rokeach, Smith, and Evans' (1960) belief congruence theory provided a context for discussion of some methodological and theoretical issues relating to conceptualization of the dependent variables, beliefcontent, belief discrepancy, meaningfulness of the race—belief comparison, attitude—belief feedback loops, attitude structure, and the relation between self and ideal similarity. The literature was judged supportive of a weak version of belief congruence theory which states that in those contexts in which social pressure is nonexistent or ineffective, belief is more important than race as a determinant of racial or ethnic discrimination. Evidence for a strong version of belief congruence theory (which states that in those contexts in which social pressure is nonexistent, or ineffective, belief is the only determinant of racial or ethnic discrimination) and was judged much more problematic.     

Balance and social comparison processes in the attribution of attraction

The area of attributed attraction was examined from the perspective that observers intuit some of the processes studied by social psychologists in the area of interpersonal attraction. A social situation was examined in which a target person was evaluated positively or negatively by another. The target was described as being either confident or not confident about the subject of the evaluation. Social comparison theory was interpreted to predict for observer subjects a stronger effect for the direction of the evaluation when the target's confidence was low rather than high, while balance theory was interpreted to predict the opposite. Support was found for the balance theory prediction. It was then suggested that low confidence may not be sufficient to engage social comparison processes unless it occurs in the context of a “need to know”—when the issue has important consequences. In another experiment, this context was provided and the trustworthiness of the evaluator was also manipulated. A social comparison effect was obtained. The strongest effect for the direction of the evaluation occurred when the target's confidence was perceived to be low and the evaluation was sincere.     

Separation of data as a principle in factor analysis

Two systems of factor analysis—factoring correlations with units in the diagonal cells and factoring correlations with communalities in the diagonal cells—are considered in relation to the commonly used statistical procedure of separating a set of data (scores) into two or more parts. It is shown that both systems of factor analysis imply the separation of the observed data into two orthogonal parts. The matrices used to achieve the separation differ for the two systems of factor analysis.     

Homogeneity of cognitive and behavioural processes underlying the relationship between insomnia and body image disturbance

Cognitive Processing - Specific cognitive behavioural mechanisms related to selective attention, situational avoidance and physical appearance are implicated in the development and maintenance of...     

Novel Insights Into Item Keying/Valence Effect Using Latent Difference (LD) Modeling Analysis

Responses to positively and negatively worded items are not always consistent, a behavioral pattern known as the item valence method effect. The current research employed latent difference (LD) modeling (Pohl, Steyer, &; Kraus, 2008 Pohl, S., Steyer, R., &; Kraus, K. (2008). Modelling method effects as individual causal effects. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 171, 41–63.[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to help determine explanations of the method effect. Respondents were more likely to reject negative characteristics (measured by negatively worded items) than to accept positive ones (measured by positively worded items), and supplementary analysis showed that this tendency was associated with social desirability response style. Correlations between the method effect and social desirability varied across Big Five personality traits, implying that social desirability cannot be the sole reason behind the phenomenon. Other possible explanations are discussed.     

Collaborative coping and daily mood in couples dealing with prostate cancer

Collaborative coping (i.e., spouses pooling resources and problem solving jointly) may be associated with better daily mood because of heightened perceptions of efficacy in coping with stressful events. The study examined the daily processes of collaborative coping (individuals' perceptions that the spouse collaborated), perceived coping effectiveness (ratings of how well they dealt with the event), and mood (i.e., Positive and Negative Affect Scale) across 14 days in 57 older couples coping with stressors involving the husband's prostate cancer and daily life in general. In hierarchical multivariate linear models, collaborative coping was associated with more positive same-day mood for both husbands and wives and less negative mood for wives only. These associations were partially mediated by heightened perceptions of coping effectiveness. Exploratory analyses revealed that collaborative coping was more frequent among wives who performed more poorly on cognitive tests and couples who reported greater marital satisfaction and more frequently using collaboration to make decisions. The results suggest that older couples may benefit from collaborative coping in dealing with problems surrounding illness.     

Toward a more complete understanding of the reciprocity of liking effect

It is proposed that the reciprocation of interpersonal attraction is a multifaceted process involving affective, cognitive, and behavioral elements, and that reciprocation can be interpreted using interdependence theory. Two studies investigated whether expressed attraction implies benevolent intentions and whether such intentions are differentially critical to reciprocated affective and behavioral attraction. Study 1 (N = 52) demonstrated that (a) an admirer's expressed attraction suggests an admirer's benevolent intentions toward the target, and (b) that benevolent intentions mediate reciprocated affective and behavioral attraction. Study 2 (N = 173) found a difference between affective and behavioral attraction: affective attraction was reciprocated in all cases; but behavioral attraction was not reciprocated when stated behavioral intentions were not consistent with intentions implied by the expressed attraction. Results support an interdependence theory perspective as particularly important for understanding why and what type of reciprocated attraction will occur. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Medicine and Humanities: Voicing Connections

Accepting as a given that the humanities disciplines are not product or "results" driven, this paper argues that the core of an interdisciplinary field of medicine and humanities, or medical humanities, is an interpretive enterprise that is not readily open to quantitative assessment. A more humanistically oriented medical practice can derive, however, from the process that produces new insights and works toward the development of a new, mutually shared, and humanizing language.