This study examined the role of compassionate love (CL) in shaping cognitive, emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses to partner distress ( N = 56 couples). One member of each couple (the support provider) observed his/her partner perform an easy or difficult stress task (designed to vary signals of partner distress). Support providers in the difficult (vs. easy) condition showed more partner focus, emotional distress, and blood pressure reactivity during the task and expressed more support afterward. Support providers high (vs. low) in CL showed greater partner focus and emotional empathy and sent more caring messages. Additional analyses suggest that CL increases sensitivity to a partner’s distress and that the link between CL and support behavior is mediated by increases in empathy and attention to one’s partner.

The study of in-group deviance has typically measured cognitive or behavioral variables rather than motivational variables. The present research addressed this gap in the literature by using the biopsychosocial (BPS) model of challenge and threat, while testing predictions stemming from the subjective group dynamics (SGD) model. Group members participated in simulated interactions with other group members. Experiment 1 (n = 39) manipulated group membership of the interaction partner (in-group vs. out-group) and partner's attitude (normative vs. deviant). In line with SGD, interaction with out-group deviant members induced motivational challenge. However, interaction with in-group deviants induced neither challenge nor threat. Experiment 2 (n = 55) showed that challenge was invoked and confrontation tendency was increased during interactions with in-group deviants when participants had sufficient psychological resources (issue-relevant knowledge). These results are consistent with the SGD model and the BPS model, and they suggest that a desire to enhance or maintain subjective validity is a fundamental process underlying interactions with deviants.

We examined the relationship between physical self-esteem and claimed self-handicapping among athletes by taking motives into consideration. In Study 1, 99 athletes were asked to report their tendency to engage in claimed self-handicapping for self-protective and self-enhancement motives (trait measures). Low self-esteem athletes reported a higher tendency to engage in claimed self-handicapping for these two motives compared with high self-esteem athletes. Neither low nor high self-esteem athletes reported a preference for one motive over the other. In Study 2, 107 athletes participated in a test that was ostensibly designed to assess high physical abilities - and thus to encourage self-handicapping for self-enhancement motives (success-meaningful condition) - or to assess low physical abilities, and thus to encourage self-handicapping for self-protective motives (failure-meaningful condition). Before starting the test, athletes were given the opportunity to claim handicaps that could impair their performance. Low self-esteem athletes claimed more handicaps than high self-esteem athletes in both conditions. Findings suggest that low physical self-esteem athletes engage more in claimed handicapping regardless of motives, relative to high physical self-esteem athletes.

One hundred and three athletes participated in a motor task that was ostensibly designed to detect their physical ability (high ego-threatening condition) or provide pretesting data for an upcoming study (low ego-threatening condition) and were then given the opportunity to claim handicaps that could impair their performance on this task. Extending previous findings that high self-handicappers (i.e., athletes who scored high on the self-handicapping scale) and low self-esteem athletes engage in claimed self-handicapping in high ego-threatening conditions, the results reveal that they may also engage in this strategy in low ego-threatening conditions. In the low ego-threatening condition, athletes’ self-esteem and self-handicapping tendency explained together 33% of the handicaps they claimed.

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