Prior research indicates that visual self-distancing enhances adaptive self-reflection about negative past events (Kross & Ayduk, 2011). However, whether this process is similarly useful when people reflect on anxiety-provoking future negative experiences, and if so, whether a similar set of mechanisms underlie its benefits in this context, is unknown. Here we addressed these questions using a combination of experimental and individual difference methods with adults and adolescents (total N = 2,344). In Studies 1 and 2, spontaneous self-distancing predicted less anxious emotional reactivity among adults and adolescents. This effect was mediated by differences in how vividly participants imagined a future anxiety-provoking event. Study 3 provided causal evidence in an adult sample: Adopting a self-distanced (vs. self-immersed) perspective when reflecting on a future stressor led to lower levels of anxiety as well as lower imagery vividness. Consistent with Studies 1 and 2, reductions in imagery vividness mediated the emotion regulatory benefits of self-distancing. A meta-analysis of all three studies further confirmed these findings across samples. Thus, the current studies extend previous research on the benefits of self-distancing to future stressors. In addition, they highlight a novel mechanism for this relation: imagery vividness. (PsycINFO Database Record
Social power elicits an array of psychological tendencies that likely impact processes related to the fundamental need for belonging—including how people respond to social rejection. Across three studies, using multiple methods and instantiations of power and rejection, we hypothesized that power buffers people from the typically adverse emotional and self-esteem consequences of rejection. Supporting this, power buffered participants from increases in negative emotion and/or decreases in self-esteem in response to rejection from a romantic partner (Study 1), an anticipated interaction partner (Study 2), and a hypothetical coworker (Study 3). These findings document a direct link between power and emotional and self-esteem reactions to rejection.
Four studies tested the overriding hypothesis that an actor's high relative to low social power enhances the actor's expectations of social acceptance, and attenuates his or her concerns about social rejection, from others. Study 1 yielded correlational support for this hypothesis, while Studies 2 and 3 produced causal evidence. Study 3 also suggested that actor-power effects on acceptance expectations and rejection concerns emerge in relation to both opposite-power counterparts and others in general, though the effects tend to be stronger for the former. Finally, Study 4 confirmed that our effects are driven at least partly by an actor's power, though at times in interaction with the high or low power of potential sources of acceptance/ rejection. The present studies extend a growing literature on power's effects on processes and phenomena related to social acceptance and rejection. We discuss limitations, implications, and future directions.
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