Self-Esteem Modulates the Time Course of Self-Positivity Bias in Explicit Self-Evaluation

Abstract

Researchers have suggested that certain individuals may show a self-positivity bias, rating themselves as possessing more positive personality traits than others. Previous evidence has shown that people evaluate self-related information in such a way as to maintain or enhance self-esteem. However, whether self-esteem would modulate the time course of self-positivity bias in explicit self-evaluation has never been explored. In the present study, 21 participants completed the Rosenberg self-esteem scale and then completed a task where they were instructed to indicate to what extent positive/negative traits described themselves. Behavioral data showed that participants endorsed positive traits as higher in self-relevance compared to the negative traits. Further, participants’ self-esteem levels were positively correlated with their self-positivity bias. Electrophysiological data revealed smaller N1 amplitude and larger late positive component (LPC) amplitude to stimuli consistent with the self-positivity bias (positive-high self-relevant stimuli) when compared to stimuli that were inconsistent with the self-positivity bias (positive-low self-relevant stimuli). Moreover, only in individuals with low self-esteem, the latency of P2 was more pronounced in processing stimuli that were consistent with the self-positivity bias (negative-low self-relevant stimuli) than to stimuli that were inconsistent with the self-positivity bias (positive-low self-relevant stimuli). Overall, the present study provides additional support for the view that low self-esteem as a personality variable would affect the early attentional processing.

Self-esteem modulates automatic attentional responses to self-relevant stimuli: evidence from event-related brain potentials

“…Previous ERP studies have also found that individuals with low self-esteem tend to easily direct their attention to emotional stimuli, such as social rejection and negatively self-relevant stimuli, and demonstrated enhanced P2 amplitudes or prolonged P2 latencies for processing these emotion-related stimuli (Li et al, 2012;Yang et al, 2012Yang et al, , 2014Li and Yang, 2013;Zhang et al, 2013). Consistent with these studies, the present study found that individuals with low self-esteem demonstrated larger P2 amplitudes in response to their own names than to close others' names, but individuals with high self-esteem did not show such effect.…”

“…Specifically, both theoretical and empirical accounts revealed that East Asians with a dominant interdependent self-construal tended to show weaker self-enhancement or lower self-esteem than Westerners with a dominant independent self-construal (Markus and Kitayama, 1991b;Feather and McKee, 1993;Heine et al, 1999;Singelis et al, 1999;Heine and Renshaw, 2002). Previous studies investigating the influences of self-esteem on cognitive processing usually didn't take account of the factor of self-construal (Dandeneau and Baldwin, 2004;Li et al, 2012;Li and Yang, 2013;Zhang et al, 2013;Yang et al, 2014). Moreover, our correlation analysis showed that the self-relevant effect, indicated by the P2 difference between self-relevant and non-self-relevant conditions, was significantly correlated with the level of self-esteem.…”

“…Previous studies suggest that individuals with low self-esteem demonstrated greater attentional bias for social rejection, emotional stimuli, or selfrelevant emotional stimuli compared with individuals with high self-esteem (Dandeneau and Baldwin, 2004;Li et al, 2012;Li and Yang, 2013;Zhang et al, 2013;Yang et al, 2014). Based on these studies, we hypothesized that individuals with low self-esteem would also demonstrate greater attentional bias for their own names at the early automatic stage of information processing indicated by enhanced P2 amplitudes, or at the late controlled stage indicated by enhanced P3 amplitudes or both.…”

“…More recently, some studies have shown an interaction among self-esteem, self-relevance, and emotion valence Yang et al, 2014). For example, Zhang et al (2013) found that individuals with low self-esteem demonstrated more pronounced P2 latencies in processing negative-low self-relevant words compared with positive-low self-relevant words, whereas such effect was not observed in individuals with high self-esteem . Yang et al (2014) also found a significantly negative correlation between self-esteem scores and P2 latencies in processing negative-high self-relevant words, which suggests that individuals with a lower level of self-esteem would divert more attentional resources to highly negative self-relevant words .…”

Relationships of Self-esteem to Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intention among Ship-building Supply Workers

“…아울러 자아존중감이 높은 사람 은 조직사회의 직무나 대인관계에서 긍정적인 피드백으로 반 응하는 경향이 있으므로 조직의 생산성에 영향을 주는 주요한 측정변수로 활용되고 있다 (Abraham, 1999;Iglesias & Vallejo, 2012;Somerville, Kelley, & Heatherton, 2010). 그러 므로 높은 수준의 자아존중감은 어떤 행위에 대한 주요한 예 측인자로서 자기 자신에 대한 자신감과 만족감뿐만 아니라 직 무만족에 긍정적인 영향을 주는 변수로 볼 수 있다 (Cho et al, 2013;Zhang, Guan, Qi, & Yang, 2013) (Jeong, 2007). 이 외에 대학병원 간호사를 대상으로 한 연구결과와 유사하였고 (Kang, Choi, Park, & Kim, 2010), 소규모 사업장 여성근로 …”