Self-esteem and "if . . . then" contingencies of interpersonal acceptance

J Pers Soc Psychol. 1996 Dec;71(6):1130-41. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.71.6.1130.

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.

Publication types

  • Clinical Trial
  • Randomized Controlled Trial
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Analysis of Variance
  • Association
  • Cognitive Science
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Interpersonal Relations*
  • Male
  • Mental Recall
  • Reaction Time
  • Self Concept*
  • Social Perception*