The Contingencies of Interpersonal Acceptance: When Romantic Relationships Function as a Self-Affirmational Resource

Existing research suggests that people with high, but not low, self-esteem use their dating partners' love and acceptance as a resource for self-affirmation when faced with personal shortcomings. The present research examines the role that perceived contingencies of acceptance play in mediating these effects. In Experiment 1, we activated either conditional or unconditional working models and then gave experimental participants failure feedback on an intelligence test. In Experiment 2, we activated thoughts of rejection (or control thoughts) and then gave experimental participants feedback suggesting that their romantic partners would discover their secret sides. Experiment 1 revealed that low and high self-esteem women both embellished their partners' love and acceptance to compensate for self-doubt when the unconditional audience was primed. When rejection was primed in Experiment 2, however, high self-esteem men reacted to the self-threat by doubting their partners' love. These findings suggest that people with low self-esteem may not typically use their relationships to self-affirm because contingencies linking failure to rejection and acceptance to success are chronically accessible in their interpersonal schemas.