Self-Esteem and Affect as Information

This research tests whether people with high self-esteem are more informed by their emotions than are people with low self-esteem. In Study 1, participants listened to a series of disturbing baby cries, rated how much distress these cries conveyed, and reported their own emotional reactions to the c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPersonality & social psychology bulletin Vol. 31; no. 2; pp. 276 - 288
Main Author Harber, Kent D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Thousand Oaks, CA SAGE Publications 01.02.2005
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Acoustic Stimulation
Adult
Affect
Crying
Emotional responsiveness
Emotions
Feelings
Female
Humans
Infant Behavior
Infant, Newborn
Information
Information processing
Judgment
Male
Mental Processes
Self Concept
Self image
Selfassessment
Selfesteem
Social psychology
self-esteem
affect as information
emotions
judgment
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Summary:This research tests whether people with high self-esteem are more informed by their emotions than are people with low self-esteem. In Study 1, participants listened to a series of disturbing baby cries, rated how much distress these cries conveyed, and reported their own emotional reactions to the cries. As predicted, the relation between participants’ emotional reactions and their cry ratings was strongest at higher levels of self-esteem. In Study 2, self-esteem again determined how strongly participants’ own emotional reactions influenced their baby cry ratings, even though esteem was measured weeks before the experiment and even after controlling for social desirability. Study 3 manipulated self-regard and showed that the correlation between participants’ emotional reactions and their cry ratings was strong for high-regard participants, moderate for control participants, and weak for low-regard participants. These results suggest that self-esteem serves to validate the informational value of feelings.
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ISSN:0146-1672
1552-7433
DOI:10.1177/0146167204271323