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. © 1992 Plenum Publishing Corporation.
Duke Scholars
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Related Subject Headings
- Social Psychology
- 5205 Social and personality psychology
- 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology
- 5202 Biological psychology
- 1702 Cognitive Sciences
- 1701 Psychology
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Social Psychology
- 5205 Social and personality psychology
- 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology
- 5202 Biological psychology
- 1702 Cognitive Sciences
- 1701 Psychology