Relational schemas have previously been linked to coercion and problem behaviors Strassberg Z. Social information processing in compliance situations. Relational schemas and the processing of social information Predicting maintenance enactment from relational schemata, spousal behavior, and relational. Conversely, marriage can be though of as more of a social obligation for individuals, to be Relational schemas and the processing of social information. Next, I draw on relational schemata theory (Baldwin, 1992) to explain why a superior's Theory Relational schemas and the processing of social information. social relationships, low interpersonal self-efficacy, lack ing, and applying the information, interpreting the ex-Relational schemas and the processing.

Attachment working models were conceptualized from the perspective of current social-cognitive theory. In Studies l and 2, most people reported experience with multiple styles of relating; at the same time, the general attachment style they endorsed was related to (a) the percentage of their significant relationships fitting different attachment-style descriptions, (b) the ease with which they could generate exemplar relationships matching these descriptions, and (c) their interpersonal expectations in these relationships. In Study 3, priming different types of attachment experiences affected participants' attraction to potential dating partners who displayed particular attachment orientations. These findings suggest that most people possess relational schemas corresponding to a range of attachment orientations and that the relative availability and accessibility of this knowledge determine their thinking about relationships.

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.

Personality processes relating to social perception have been shown to play a significant role in the experience of stress. In 5 studies, the authors demonstrate that early stage attentional processes influence the perception of social threat and modify the human stress response. The authors first show that cortisol release in response to a stressful situation correlates with selective attention toward social threat. Second, the authors show in 2 laboratory studies that this attentional pattern, most evident among individuals with low self-esteem, can be modified with a repetitive training task. Next, in a field study, students trained to modify their attentional pattern to reduce vigilance for social threat showed lower self-reported stress related to their final exam. In a final field study with telemarketers, the attentional training task led to increased self-esteem, decreased cortisol and perceived stress responses, higher confidence, and greater work performance. Taken together, these results demonstrate the impact of antecedent-focused strategies on the late-stage consequences of social stress.

We used self-awareness and cognitive priming methodologies to test the hypothesis that important aspects of the experience of self derive from the way one would be perceived and responded to by a private audience of internally represented significant others. In the first study, 40 undergraduate women visualized the faces of either two acquaintances from campus or two older members of their own family. Later, when they rated the enjoyableness of a sexually permissive piece of fiction, they tended to respond in ways that would be acceptable to their salient private audience. There was some evidence that this effect was especially pronounced for subjects made self-aware by the presence of a small mirror, whose responsivity to self-image concerns was presumably heightened. In the second study, 60 undergraduate men were exposed to a failure experience, and their resulting self-evaluations were assessed. Self-aware subjects' responses reflected the evaluative style of a recently visualized private audience. Strong negative self-evaluative reactions on a number of measures were evident when the salient audience tended to make acceptance contingent on successful performances, but not when the audience manifested relatively noncontingent acceptance. These results demonstrate the influence of internally represented significant relationships on the experience of self.A unique aspect of human cognition is the ability of people to be aware of themselves, develop theories about who they are, and evaluate those self-images. Many models have been proposed from diverse theoretical perspectives, identifying factors that shape the self-evaluation process and the related cycle of behavioral self-regulation. One idea that has formed the cornerstone of a number of approaches is that a person's experience of self often takes the form of imagining how the self would be perceived and responded to by significant other people. This idea is most prevalent in the writings of the symbolic interactionists (e.g., Cooley's, 1902, looking-glass self; Mead's, 1934, generalized other), but it is also central to diverse other theories

Cognitive priming methodologies were employed to examine whether internally represented interpersonal information can affect the experience of self. In the first study, psychology graduate students evaluated their own research ideas after exposures, below the level of conscious awareness, to slides of either the scowling, disapproving face of their department chair or the approving face of another person. In the second study, Catholic subjects evaluated themselves after exposure to the disapproving face of either the Pope or an unfamiliar other. In both studies, self-ratings were lower after the presentation of a disapproving significant other. In Study 2 there was no effect, however, if the disapproving other was not a personally significant authority figure, either because the subject was a relatively nonpracticing Catholic or the picture was of an unfamiliar person. It is argued that the primes may have activated relationship schemas, or cognitive structures representing regularities in interpersonal interaction. A person's sense of self at any given moment is surely influenced by a broad range of factors, including stable self-concepts, recent experiStudy 1 was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellowship to Mark Baldwin, and was conducted while he was at

It is proposed that the cognitive mechanisms underlying attachment styles are expectations about interaction with significant others. Two studies are described that assessed these relational schemata. The first study revealed that individuals of different attachment styles do have different expectations about likely patterns of interaction with a romantic partner in various interpersonal domains. The second study demonstrated the utility of the lexical decision task for examining interpersonal expectancies. When given a related context, secure subjects were quicker to identify words representing positive interpersonal outcomes, whereas insecure subjects were quicker to identify negative outcome words. Methodological and conceptual implications of a relational schema approach to attachment styles are discussed.

Implicit self-esteem is the automatic, nonconscious aspect of self-esteem. This study demonstrated that implicit self-esteem can be increased using a computer game that repeatedly pairs self-relevant information with smiling faces. These findings, which are consistent with principles of classical conditioning, establish the associative and interpersonal nature of implicit self-esteem and demonstrate the potential benefit of applying basic learning principles in this domain.