Contingencies of self-worth and self-regulation of behavior

Brook, Amara T.; Crocker, Jennifer

doi:10.1037/e633912013-405

PsycEXTRA Dataset 2004

DOI: 10.1037/e633912013-405

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Contingencies of self-worth and self-regulation of behavior

Amara T. Brook¹,

Jennifer Crocker²

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2023

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Cited by 8 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…For example, Strahan (2002) measured appearance contingency of self‐worth and found that highly contingent students ate less snack food. Brook (Brook, 2005, Study 1) measured academic contingency of self‐worth, had participants solve GRE analytical problems, and then gave participants the opportunity to study solutions to the problems they had attempted. Basing self‐worth on academics marginally predicted spending more time studying the GRE solutions.…”

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“…Basing self‐worth on academics marginally predicted spending more time studying the GRE solutions. In another study, (Brook, 2005, Study 4), participants completed a measure of basing self‐worth on environmentalism and later had an opportunity to write a letter to a politician on any public policy issue of their choice. The more participants based their self‐worth on environmentalism, the more likely they were to write their letter on an environmental topic.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Basing self‐worth on a domain is one reason why people might care about doing well but certainly not the only reason. Correlations between importance of a domain and basing self‐worth on that domain vary from .44 (academics; Brook, 2005, Study 3) to .89 (God's love; Crocker, Karpinski, Quinn, & Chase, 2003). Thus, for some domains, contingent self‐worth is closely related to domain importance, but for other domains, they are only loosely related.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Performance may be undermined when the behaviors that best protect self‐worth do not lead to optimal performance. To test this hypothesis, Brook (2005, Study 3) measured the effects of basing self‐worth on academics and overall importance of academics on a variety of self‐regulatory outcomes. Contingent self‐worth interacted with self‐esteem level and task difficulty to predict better performance on the difficult task for low self‐esteem participants but poorer performance for high self‐esteem participants; overall importance of academics did not have these effects.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Our research also suggests that ability‐validation goals are fragile goals—people have them only as long as they think they can succeed and thus validate their ability. For example, Brook (2005, Study 2) had students complete a measure of basing self‐esteem on academics; they were then asked to do either an easy or difficult academic task. After they finished the task, participants completed a measure of academic self‐validation goals consisting of items such as, “It is important for me to confirm my intelligence through my schoolwork” (Grant & Dweck, 2003).…”

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confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

The Pursuit of Self‐Esteem: Contingencies of Self‐Worth and Self‐Regulation

Crocker

Brook

Niiya

et al. 2006

Journal of Personality

Self Cite

143

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Successful self-regulation is defined as the willingness to exert effort toward one's most important goals, while taking setbacks and failures as opportunities to learn, identify weaknesses and address them, and develop new strategies toward achieving those goals. Contingencies of self-worth can facilitate self-regulation because people are highly motivated to succeed and avoid failure in domains of contingency. However, because boosts in self-esteem are pleasurable and drops in self-esteem are painful, protection, maintenance, and enhancement of self-esteem can become the overriding goal. Several pitfalls for self-regulation can result, especially when tasks are difficult and failure is likely. In this article, we describe a program of research examining these self-regulation pitfalls associated with contingent self-worth and suggest that learning orientations, particularly the willingness to embrace failure for the learning it affords, foster successful self-regulation even in people with highly contingent self-esteem.

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The Pursuit of Self‐Esteem: Contingencies of Self‐Worth and Self‐Regulation

Crocker

Brook

Niiya

et al. 2006

Journal of Personality

Self Cite

143

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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We need to talk about self-esteem: The effect of contingent self-worth on student achievement and well-being.

Fairlamb¹

2022

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology

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Self-esteem has a long history concerning its relationship with achievement and well-being, both of which are important issues in higher education. Whereas historically, high self-esteem has been touted as having positive benefits for student success and well-being, the present paper explores how self-esteem, namely when it is contingent and based on one's academic work, may be more detrimental than beneficial to these outcomes. Evidence regarding academic contingent self-worth is reviewed, with the main outcomes being that it can produce deficits to one's learning, success, and well-being. A lot of the reviewed evidence therefore goes against popular wisdom that investing in one's academic work can produce positive outcomes. Strategies to tackle contingent self-worth are discussed including reducing levels of contingent self-worth, changing the culture of learning in higher education, the role of learning orientations, and self-compassion.

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Testing the differential effects of death anxiety and death reflection on proenvironmental outcomes.

Guerriero¹,

Swim²

2022

Translational Issues in Psychological Science

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Building on previous research in existential psychology, we tested whether inducing death anxiety and death reflection differentially inhibit or inspire proenvironmental outcomes, respectively (Hypothesis 1). The outcomes we examined were of biospheric concern, intention to engage in environmental activism, support for population growth mitigation policies, and support for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. We also hypothesized that these differential effects would be more evident for those with less versus more environmentalist contingent self-worth (Hypothesis 2). In an experimental online study (N = 280), neither death anxiety nor death reflection affected proenvironmental outcomes. We only found a marginally significant positive effect of death reflection vs. the control condition on biospheric concern and a marginally significant interaction suggesting death reflection might increase biospheric concern compared to death anxiety among those weak in environmentalist contingent self-worth. Overall, the notion that mortality reminders affect proenvironmental outcomes was unsupported.What is the significance of this article for the general public?Despite plausibility based on extant theory in existential psychology and prior findings on the effect of mortality reminders on proenvironmental outcomes, we did not find evidence that experiences of death anxiety or death reflection have a meaningful impact on proenvironmental outcomes. Although we detected the possibility of a small positive effect of death reflection on biospheric concern, especially for those with less environmentalist contingent self-worth, mortality reminders did not affect activism intention, support for population growth mitigation policies, or support for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

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Contingencies of self-worth and self-regulation of behavior

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

The Pursuit of Self‐Esteem: Contingencies of Self‐Worth and Self‐Regulation

The Pursuit of Self‐Esteem: Contingencies of Self‐Worth and Self‐Regulation

We need to talk about self-esteem: The effect of contingent self-worth on student achievement and well-being.

Testing the differential effects of death anxiety and death reflection on proenvironmental outcomes.

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