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Building intimate relationships is rewarding but entails risking rejection. Trait self-esteem-a person's overall self-evaluation-has important implications for how people behave in socially risky situations. Integrating established models of responsiveness and intimacy with theory and research on self-esteem, we present a model that highlights the ways in which self-esteem impacts intimacy-building. A review of relevant research reveals that compared to people with high self-esteem, people with low self-esteem exhibit interpersonal perceptions and behaviors that can hinder intimacy development-for example, disclosing less openly, and eliciting and perceiving less responsiveness from others. We identify important directions for future research and consider methods for encouraging intimacy-promoting processes among people with low self-esteem., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Romantic relationships activate a process of psychological attunement whereby self-esteem becomes responsive to the romantic bond, thereby potentially benefitting relationship quality and bolstering self-esteem. Yet some people are romantically single, raising the question: Do single people also exhibit psychological attunement? In a 2-year longitudinal study of young adults ( N = 279), we test whether singles psychologically attune to their friendships. Multilevel modeling revealed that within-person fluctuations in friendship quality predicted within-person fluctuations in self-esteem, and this association was stronger for singles than for partnered people. A cross-sectional mediation analysis also revealed that singles invested more in their friendships than partnered people, and greater friendship investment predicted greater friendship quality and self-esteem later on. Finally, singles maintain their friendship quality over time while partnered people experience declines. Taken together, these results suggest that singles are psychologically attuned to their friendships, and such attunement may benefit their belongingness and self-esteem., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2021.)

Objective: Having a responsive partner is important for the well-being of relationships. Unfortunately, people with low self-esteem (LSEs) perceive their partners to be less responsive than do people with high self-esteem (HSEs). Although the common assumption has been that LSEs' negative partner perceptions are "all in their heads"-a reflection of their negative self-projection-we argue that LSEs' views of lower partner responsiveness are, in fact, warranted., Method: Across two studies (N Study1  = 122 couples, M age  = 22.28, 50% female; N Study2  = 73 couples, M age  = 19.96, 51% female), we examined LSEs' and HSEs' perceptions of their partners' responsiveness to their negative self-disclosures, comparing them with partners' reports (Study 1) and ratings from objective coders following a negative experience created in the lab (Study 2)., Results: Consistent with our hypothesis, partners of LSEs were less responsive than partners of HSEs to disclosers' negative self-disclosures, as rated by disclosers, listeners, and objective observers. Study 3 (N = 99, M age  = 33.19, 54% female) explored possible mechanisms behind these self-esteem differences., Conclusions: The finding that partners of LSEs (vs. HSEs) are less responsive may contribute to LSEs' poorer relationships., (© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Expressing our innermost thoughts and feelings is critical to the development of intimacy (Reis & Shaver, 1988), but also risks negative evaluation and rejection. Past research suggests that people with high self-esteem are more expressive and self-disclosing because they trust that others care for them and will not reject them (Gaucher et al., 2012). However, feeling good about oneself may not always be enough; disclosure may also depend on how we feel about other people. Drawing on the principles of risk regulation theory (Murray et al., 2006), we propose that agreeableness-a trait that refers to the positivity of interpersonal motivations and behaviors-is a key determinant of trust in a partner's caring and responsiveness, and may work in conjunction with self-esteem to predict disclosure. We examined this possibility by exploring how both self-esteem and agreeableness predict a particularly risky and intimate form of self-disclosure, the disclosure of emotional distress. In 6 studies using correlational, partner-report, and experimental methods, we demonstrate that self-esteem and agreeableness interact to predict disclosure: People who are high in both self-esteem and agreeableness show higher emotional disclosure. We also found evidence that trust mediates this effect. People high in self-esteem and agreeableness are most self-revealing, it seems, because they are especially trusting of their partners' caring. Self-esteem and agreeableness were particularly important for the disclosure of vulnerable emotions (i.e., sadness; Study 5) and disclosures that were especially risky (Study 6). These findings illustrate how dispositional variables can work together to explain behavior in close relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).)

What influences how people feel about and behave toward their romantic partners? Extending beyond features of the partners, relationship experiences, and social context, the current research examines whether benign, relationship-irrelevant factors-such as one's somatic experiences-can influence relationship perceptions and interpersonal behavior. Drawing on the embodiment literature, we propose that experiencing physical instability can undermine perceptions of relationship stability. Participants who experienced physical instability by sitting at a wobbly workstation rather than a stable workstation (Study 1), standing on one foot rather than two (Study 2), or sitting on an inflatable seat cushion rather than a rigid one (Study 3) perceived their romantic relationships to be less likely to last. Results were consistent with risk-regulation theory: Perceptions of relational instability were associated with reporting lower relationship quality (Studies 1-3) and expressing less affection toward the partner (Studies 2 and 3). These findings indicate that benign physical experiences can influence perceptions of relationship stability, exerting downstream effects on consequential relationship processes., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

We propose a new approach for examining self-related aspects and phenomena. The approach includes (1) a taxonomy and (2) an emphasis on multiple levels of mechanisms. The taxonomy categorizes approximately eighty self-related phenomena according to three primary functions involving the self: representing, effecting, and changing. The representing self encompasses the ways in which people depict themselves, either to themselves or to others (e.g., self-concepts, self-presentation). The effecting self concerns ways in which people facilitate or limit their own traits and behaviors (e.g., self-enhancement, self-regulation). The changing self is less time-limited than the effecting self; it concerns phenomena that involve lasting alterations in how people represent and control themselves (e.g., self-expansion, self-development). Each self-related phenomenon within these three categories may be examined at four levels of interacting mechanisms (social, individual, neural, and molecular). We illustrate our approach by focusing on seven self-related phenomena.

Partner responsiveness-the degree to which partners respond with caring, understanding, and validation to one another's disclosures (Reis, Clark, & Holmes, 2004; Reis & Shaver, 1988)--has been heralded as a "core, defining construct" in relationship science (Reis, 2007, p. 28). Yet little is known about the determinants of responsiveness in ongoing relationships. The present research elucidates one such set of processes, focusing in particular on responsiveness to negative disclosures. We predicted that the degree to which a partner behaves responsively to negative disclosures depends on the partner's perception of the discloser's typical expressive tendencies. Results of 5 studies employing both correlational and experimental methods supported the hypothesis that partners are less responsive to negative disclosures made by disclosers whom they perceive to have high negativity baselines-that is, to express negativity frequently--than to identical (Studies 1-4) or equally negative (Study 5) disclosures made by disclosers with lower negativity baselines. We also examined 2 routes through which negativity baselines might affect partner responsiveness: by shaping listener appraisals of the discloser's need for support and by making disengagement from those interactions seem justifiable to listeners. These findings fill an important gap in the responsiveness literature and highlight the utility of considering person-context factors in emotion interpretation and responsiveness processes.

It can be challenging for support providers to facilitate effective social support interactions even when they have the best intentions. In the current article, we examine some reasons for this difficulty, with a focus on support recipients' self-esteem as a crucial variable. We predicted that recipients' receptiveness to support would be influenced by both support strategy and recipient self-esteem and that receptiveness in turn would impact providers' perceived caregiving efficacy and relationship quality. Study 1 (hypothetical scenarios), Study 2 (confederate interaction), and Study 3 (reports of recently received support) showed that individuals with low self-esteem (LSEs) are less receptive than are individuals with high self-esteem (HSEs) to support that positively reframes their experience but are equally receptive to support that validates their negative feelings. In Study 4, providers demonstrated some knowledge that positive reframing would be less helpful to LSEs than to HSEs but indicated equal intention to give such support. Study 5 showed that, in a real interaction, friends were indeed equally likely to offer positive reframing to both LSEs and HSEs but were less likely to offer validation to LSEs. LSEs were less accepting of such support, and in turn providers felt worse about the interaction, about themselves, and about their friendship more broadly. Study 6 confirmed that recipients' receptivity to support directly influenced providers' experience of a support interaction as well as their self- and relationship evaluations. The findings illustrate how well-meaning support attempts that do not match recipients' particular preferences may be detrimental to both members of the dyad.

Baumeister, Tice, and Hutton proposed that individuals with low self-esteem (LSEs) adopt a more cautious, self-protective self-presentational style than individuals with high self-esteem (HSEs). The authors predicted that LSEs' self-protectiveness leads them to be less expressive--less revealing of their thoughts and feelings--with others than HSEs, and that this self-esteem difference is mediated by their perceptions of the interaction partner's regard for them. Two correlational studies supported these predictions (Studies 1 and 2). Moreover, LSEs became more expressive when their perceived regard was experimentally heightened--when they imagined speaking to someone who was unconditionally accepting rather than judgmental (Study 3) and when their perceptions of regard were increased through Marigold, Holmes, and Ross's compliment-reframing task (Study 4). These findings suggest that LSEs' expressiveness can be heightened through interventions that reduce their concerns about social acceptance.

This article explores how self-esteem and executive resources interact to determine responses to motivational conflict. One correlational and 3 experimental studies investigated the hypothesis that high and low self-esteem people undertake different self-regulatory strategies in "risky" situations that afford opportunity to pursue competing goals and that carrying out these strategies requires executive resources. When such resources are available, high self-esteem people respond to risk by prioritizing and pursuing approach goals, whereas low self-esteem people prioritize avoidance goals. However, self-esteem does not influence responses to risk when executive resources are impaired. In these studies, risk was operationalized by exposing participants to a relationship threat (Studies 1 and 2), by using participants' self-reported marital conflict (Study 3), and by threatening academic competence (Study 4). Executive resources were operationalized as cognitive load (Studies 1 and 2), working memory capacity (Study 3), and resource depletion (Study 4). When executive resources were ample, high self-esteem people responded to interpersonal risk by making more positive relationship evaluations (Studies 1, 2, and 3) and making more risky social comparisons following a personal failure (Study 4) than did low self-esteem people. Self-esteem did not predict participants' responses when executive resources were impaired or when risk was absent. The regulatory function of self-esteem may be more resource-dependent than has been previously theorized.

The popular media have publicized the idea that social networking Web sites (e.g., Facebook) may enrich the interpersonal lives of people who struggle to make social connections. The opportunity that such sites provide for self-disclosure-a necessary component in the development of intimacy--could be especially beneficial for people with low self-esteem, who are normally hesitant to self-disclose and who have difficulty maintaining satisfying relationships. We suspected that posting on Facebook would reduce the perceived riskiness of self-disclosure, thus encouraging people with low self-esteem to express themselves more openly. In three studies, we examined whether such individuals see Facebook as a safe and appealing medium for self-disclosure, and whether their actual Facebook posts enabled them to reap social rewards. We found that although people with low self-esteem considered Facebook an appealing venue for self-disclosure, the low positivity and high negativity of their disclosures elicited undesirable responses from other people.

The authors draw on sociometer theory (e.g., Leary, 2004) and self-verification theory (e.g., Swann, 1997) to propose an expanded model of the regulatory function of self-esteem. The model suggests that people not only possess an acceptance signaling system that indicates whether relational value is high or low but also possess an epistemic signaling system that indicates whether social feedback is consistent or inconsistent with chronic perceived relational value (i.e., global self-esteem). One correlational study and 5 experiments, with diverse operationalizations of social feedback, demonstrated that the epistemic signaling system responds to self-esteem consistent or inconsistent relational-value feedback with increases or deceases in epistemic certainty. Moreover, Studies 3-6 demonstrated that the acceptance and epistemic signaling systems respond uniquely to social feedback. Finally, Studies 5 and 6 provide evidence that the epistemic signaling system is part of a broader self-regulatory system: Self-esteem inconsistent feedback caused cognitive efforts to decrease the discrepancy between self-views and feedback and caused depleted self-regulatory capacity on a subsequent self-control task., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.)

People's expectations of acceptance often come to create the acceptance or rejection they anticipate. The authors tested the hypothesis that interpersonal warmth is the behavioral key to this acceptance prophecy: If people expect acceptance, they will behave warmly, which in turn will lead other people to accept them; if they expect rejection, they will behave coldly, which will lead to less acceptance. A correlational study and an experiment supported this model. Study 1 confirmed that participants' warm and friendly behavior was a robust mediator of the acceptance prophecy compared to four plausible alternative explanations. Study 2 demonstrated that situational cues that reduced the risk of rejection also increased socially pessimistic participants' warmth and thus improved their social outcomes.

Positive self-statements are widely believed to boost mood and self-esteem, yet their effectiveness has not been demonstrated. We examined the contrary prediction that positive self-statements can be ineffective or even harmful. A survey study confirmed that people often use positive self-statements and believe them to be effective. Two experiments showed that among participants with low self-esteem, those who repeated a positive self-statement ("I'm a lovable person") or who focused on how that statement was true felt worse than those who did not repeat the statement or who focused on how it was both true and not true. Among participants with high self-esteem, those who repeated the statement or focused on how it was true felt better than those who did not, but to a limited degree. Repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people, but backfire for the very people who "need" them the most.

Why are people with low self-esteem (LSE) less motivated than people with high self-esteem (HSE) to improve sad moods? The present research examined whether feelings of personal deservingness contribute to this difference. Four experiments with undergraduate participants involved a sad mood induction, a manipulation of personal deservingness, or both. Results suggested that (a) LSEs feel less deserving of positive outcomes and of positive moods than do HSEs, (b) feelings of personal deservingness can vary with the situation, and be lowered through reminders of social rejection and personal flaws, and (c) feeling relatively undeserving dampens LSEs', but not HSEs', motivation to repair sad moods. These results have implications for the emotion regulation, self-esteem, and social justice literatures.

To date, research suggests that self-concept clarity is a monolithic construct: Some people have clearly defined self-concepts in all domains, whereas others do not. The authors argued that self-concept clarity is instead multifaceted and varies across trait domains. The authors predicted that social commodities (SCs; e.g., looks, popularity, social skills) would show less self-concept clarity than would communal qualities (CQs; e.g., kindness, warmth, honesty), due to domain differences in observability, ambiguity, and controllability. Results replicated past findings that self-esteem predicts self-concept clarity but also demonstrated that participants' SC self-views were less clear than their CQ self-views. Moreover, people showed greater clarity about traits that were lower in observability and higher in ambiguity and controllability. These findings suggest that everyone, regardless of self-esteem, has self-concept domains of relative confidence and confusion.

The authors draw upon social, personality, and health psychology to propose and test a self-and-social-bonds model of health. The model contends that lower self-esteem predicts health problems and that poor-quality social bonds explain this association. In Study 1, lower self-esteem prospectively predicted reports of health problems 2 months later, and this association was explained by subjective reports of poor social bonds. Study 2 replicated the results of Study 1 but used a longitudinal design with 6 waves of data collection, assessed self-reports of concrete health-related behaviors (i.e., number of visits to the doctor and classes missed due to illness), and measured both subjective and objective indicators of quality of social bonds (i.e., interpersonal stress and number of friends). In addition, Study 2 showed that poor-quality social bonds predicted acute drops in self-esteem over time, which in turn predicted acute decreases in quality of social bonds and, consequently, acute increases in health problems. In both studies, alternative explanations to the model were tested.

The authors draw on sociometer theory to propose that self-esteem is attuned to traits that garner others' acceptance, and the traits that garner acceptance depend on one's social role. Attunement of self-esteem refers to the linkage, or connection, between self-esteem and specific traits, which may be observed most clearly in the association between self-esteem and specific self-evaluations. In most roles, appearance and popularity determine acceptance, so self-esteem is most attuned to those traits. At the same time, interdependent social roles emphasize the value of communal qualities, so occupants of those roles have self-esteem that is more attuned to communal qualities than is the general norm. To avoid the biases of people's personal theories, the authors assessed attunement of self-esteem to particular traits indirectly via the correlation between self-esteem and self-ratings, cognitive accessibility measures, and an experiment involving social decision making. As hypothesized, self-esteem was generally more attuned to appearances than to communal qualities, but interdependent social roles predicted heightened attunement of self-esteem to qualities like kindness and understanding., ((c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved.)

This research examined the hypothesis that self-esteem negatively predicts avoidance (relative to approach) personal goals, as well as the hypothesis that self-esteem mediates the link between indicators of approach and avoidance temperament and avoidance (relative to approach) personal goals. Study 1 established that self-esteem is indeed negatively related to avoidance (relative to approach) goals, even with social desirability concerns controlled. In Study 2, self-esteem was found to mediate the relation between Neuroticism (conceptualized as an indicator of avoidance temperament) and avoidance (relative to approach) personal goals. In Study 3, self-esteem was documented as a mediator of the relation between BAS and BIS sensitivity (conceptualized as indicators of approach and avoidance temperament, respectively) and avoidance (relative to approach) personal goals in the achievement domain. The implications of these findings for our understanding of basic personality dispositions, self-esteem, and personal goals are discussed.

Successes--defined broadly as meeting important standards or receiving positive evaluations--are widely assumed to be enjoyed equally by people with high self-esteem (HSEs) and low self-esteem (LSEs). Three studies examined the contradictory hypothesis that HSEs react more favorably to success than do LSEs and that success brings about certain unfavorable consequences for LSEs. Undergraduate participants reacted to a laboratory-manipulated success (Studies 1 and 2) or imagined highly positive events in the future (Study 3). Self-esteem differences emerged in anxiety, thoughts about the self, and (in Study 3) thoughts about non-self-related aspects of the event. LSEs were more anxious than HSEs after succeeding, success improved HSEs' self-relevant thoughts but not LSEs', and LSEs focused more on success's negative aspects., (((c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).)

The aim of this paper is to develop a broadly-applicable and self-consistent thin-film biphasic modelling framework for the full crawling cycle of a single animal cell. A hierarchy of thin-film two-phase 'reactive flow' models is derived; between them these cover a wide range of biologically relevant parameter regimes. The mathematical properties and biological implications of the resulting systems of high-order nonlinear degenerate parabolic-elliptic evolution equations are investigated. Linear-stability arguments suggest the formation of highly localized regions of high or low network density associated with small irregular oscillations or 'ruffling' of the plasma membrane. Local analyses at the contact line identify the classes of admissible contact-line conditions, through which we study for the first time the effect on the cell-scale motion of the 'mesoscopic' contact-line physics, which consists of the chemical and mechanical mechanisms for protrusive and retractive force generation near the outer cell periphery. One of the formulations is used to develop a minimal model for cell body translocation over a thin pseudopod, which predicts that myosin-driven contraction is not essential for rapid translocation. An analytic prediction for the translocation speed is given in terms of the network viscosity and slip coefficient (a parameter measuring the adhesion strength), of the membrane tension and of the thicknesses of the pseudopod and actin cortex; this is in good agreement with the translocation speed of osteoblasts on biomaterial substrates commonly used for orthopaedic implants. Limitations of the modelling approach and directions for future work are outlined.

The efficacy of conventional high vacuum scanning electron microscopy (SEM), environmental SEM (ESEM), and confocal laser scanning microscopy techniques in the assessment of cell-material interactions is compared. Specific attention is given to the application of these techniques in the assessment of the early morphological response of human osteoblast-like cells cultured on titanium dioxide. The processing of cells cultured for conventional high vacuum SEM leads to the loss of morphological features that are retained when using ESEM. The use of cytoskeletal labeling, viewed with confocal laser scanning microscopy, in conjunction with ESEM gives an indication of the changes to cell morphology as a consequence of incubation time in response to interactions at the biological/material interface., (Copyright 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res 69A: 359-366, 2004)

Five studies examined the hypotheses that when people experience positive affect, those low in self-esteem are especially likely to dampen that affect, whereas those high in self-esteem are especially likely to savor it. Undergraduate participants' memories for a positive event (Study 1) and their reported reactions to a success (Study 2) supported the dampening prediction. Results also suggest that dampening was associated with worse mood the day after a success (Study 2), that positive and negative affect regulation are distinct, that self-esteem is associated with affect regulation even when Neuroticism and Extraversion are controlled (Studies 3 and 4), and that self-esteem may be especially important for certain types of positive events and positive affect regulation (Study 5).

Research addressing the influence of happy mood on self-focused attention has yielded inconsistent results. Some studies found that happy mood decreased self-focus relative to sad mood. Other studies did not detect a significant difference between happy and neutral mood, and still other studies found that happy mood, relative to neutral mood, increased self-focus. These investigations have potential shortcomings, such as an insufficiently powerful happy mood induction and a confound between visualization mood inductions and self-focus itself. The present experiment addressed these shortcomings by inducing mood via musical selections, equalizing the approximate potency between happy and sad moods, and using a within-participants design. Relative to neutral mood, happy mood decreased self-focused attention.

Two studies examined whether global self-esteem was associated with bias in memory for autobiographical experience. For 7 days, participants described specific events and made ratings of their experience (i.e., state self-esteem, positive and negative emotion, and perceived valence of the event) in response to each event. Later, participants were presented with their event descriptions and were asked to recall their experience ratings from memory. As hypothesized, higher global self-esteem predicted positive shifts in memory for experience, whereas lower global self-esteem predicted negative shifts in memory for experience. Patterns of bias were strongest for remembered state self-esteem, moderate for positive emotion, and minimal for event valence. Self-esteem did not predict bias for negative emotion. Mood at the time of recall (measured in Study 2) generally did not account for the patterns. These findings strengthen the view that self-esteem is a rich source of knowledge about the self that can influence memory for some kinds of autobiographical experience., (Copyright 2003 Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.)

This research examined the hypothesis that people with low self-esteem (LSE) are less motivated than people with high self-esteem (HSE) to repair their negative moods. In Study 1, participants completed diaries in response to either a success or a failure in their everyday lives. Participants described what they intended to do next and the reasons behind those plans. After failure, fewer LSE than HSE participants expressed a goal to improve their mood. A follow-up investigation (Study 2) suggested that this difference was not due to a self-esteem difference in knowledge of mood repair strategies. In Study 3, after undergoing a negative mood induction, fewer LSE than HSE participants chose to watch a comedy video, even though both groups believed the comedy video would make them happy. Studies 4 and 5 explored possible reasons why LSE people are less motivated than HSE people to repair their negative moods.

Two models concerning downward comparison are motivational; they predict that when people are unhappy, they make downward comparisons to self-enhance (e.g., Wills, 1981). In contrast, the affect-cognition priming model (Wheeler & Miyake, 1992) predicts that unhappy people make upward comparisons because negative affect makes mood-congruent comparisons more accessible. The authors propose that both motivational and accessibility factors influence social comparisons. A study of undergraduates' self-recorded everyday comparisons supported this view. In addition, results (a) pointed to motivational influences other than self-enhancement and an accessibility influence other than mood-congruent priming, (b) suggested that motivated and unintended comparisons may differ somewhat in their susceptibility to motivational and accessibility influences, and (c) identified challenges to both self-enhancement and priming models.

"Sociotropic" people are supposedly vulnerable to dysphoria after negative interpersonal events, whereas "autonomous" people are supposedly vulnerable to achievement-related failures. The present study examined whether these personality styles are borne out in social comparison processes. For 3 weeks, 27 sociotropic and 35 autonomous undergraduates completed records of their social comparisons. Depressive personality style moderated comparison frequency and the affective consequences of comparisons, especially for dysphoric individuals: Dysphoric respondents were especially likely to make comparisons in domains that were congruent with their personalities, and comparisons in congruent domains were associated with greater mood change than comparisons in other domains, perhaps especially for dysphoric respondents. These results have implications for the literatures on social comparison and on depressive personality styles.

This study concerns the effect of simple surface treatments on the nature of the oxide layer, of commercially pure titanium (cpTi) and Ti6Al4V alloy substrates and their effect on human osteoblast cells (HOBS). After treatment the surfaces were analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) in order to identify the surface groups responsible for the cell attachment process. The assessment of cell attachment was monitored by the Alamar blue assay (AB), measuring cell activity, in three types of media: phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), serum containing and serum-free Dulbecco's modified Eagle's cell culture medium (SER+ and SERF respectively). XPS analysis of the treated surfaces revealed consistent peaks representative of TiO2 on all surfaces and Ti(0) and Ti2O3 on the non-heat-treated surfaces. The cell activity assays indicated that there were no significant differences in cellular activity caused by surface treatments, but the cellular activity compared between the three types of medium was greatest in the PBS over the initial stages of attachment., (Copyright 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers)

People with high self-esteem (HSEs) respond less negatively to failure than people with low self-esteem (LSEs). This difference may occur because HSEs overcome the natural tendency to focus on negative thoughts after failure, and instead focus on their strengths. In 2 experiments, participants with high and low self-esteem received failure, success, or no feedback. Accessibility of strengths and weaknesses was measured by response latency on an unrelated task. Results confirmed that although strengths were typically more accessible than weaknesses for both groups, the discrepancy was larger for HSEs after failure feedback than after no feedback. This heightened discrepancy appears to result from HSEs recruiting their strengths and suppressing their weaknesses. In contrast, LSEs' weaknesses appeared to become especially accessible after failure. These results have implications for the mood-congruent cognition and self-esteem literatures.

People with low self-esteem (LSE) seem to focus on self-protection; rather than trying to achieve gains for their self-esteem, they try to avoid losses. This research examined, in a social comparison context, the hypothesis that LSEs seek self-enhancement when they have an opportunity that is "safe," that is, carrying little risk of humiliation. Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that LSEs sought the most social comparisons after receiving success feedback, whereas high-self-esteem Ss (HSEs) sought the most comparisons after failure. Further results suggested that LSEs who succeeded were seizing a safe means of self-enhancement and that HSEs who failed were seeking to compensate for the failure. Also supporting this interpretation for LSEs was Experiment 3, in which LSEs who succeeded sought the most comparisons when such comparisons promised to be favorable. All three studies illustrate the value of a new measure of social comparison selection.

Several questions concerning the relation between self-focused attention and depressed mood were examined: (a) Does the association involve global negative affect, rather than sadness per se? (b) is self-focus associated with specific negative affects other than sadness? and (c) does the association occur at the between-subjects or within-subject level? Also hypothesized was that self-focus is associated with coping responses that may perpetuate negative mood. In an idiographic/nomothetic design, 40 male community residents completed daily reports for 30 days. Results suggest that self-focus is linked with global negative mood as well as specific negative affects other than sadness and that the association occurs on a between-persons, rather than a day-to-day within-person, basis. In addition, highly self-focused men reported using passive and ruminative coping styles, which in turn were associated with distressed affect.

Despite growing evidence that depression is linked with self-focused attention, little is known about how depressed individuals become self-focused or, more generally, about what arouses self-focus in everyday life. Two experiments examined the hypothesis that affect itself induces self-focused attention. In Experiment 1, moods were manipulated with an imagination mood-induction procedure. Sad-induction Ss became higher in self-focus than did neutral-induction Ss. Experiment 2 replicated this effect for sad moods by means of a musical mood-induction procedure and different measures of self-focus. However, Experiment 2 failed to support the hypothesis that happy moods induce self-focus. The results have implications for mood-induction research, self-focused attention, and recent models of depression.

This study explored the extent of and reasons for noncompliance with intravenously-administered chemotherapy among a sample of breast cancer patients. Overall, chemotherapy compliance was high (92%). The few cases of non-compliance identified were indirect. In particular, two patients rejected chemotherapy outright and two alcoholic patients used alcohol to avoid chemotherapy. The high rate of chemotherapy compliance was judged to be due to its perceived centrality to recovery from cancer, the "medical" nature of its administration, the ease with which non-compliance can be detected, and patients' spontaneous use of successful coping techniques.

The practice of breast self-examination (BSE) was explored by personal interview in a sample of women with diagnosed breast cancer. Despite physician recommendations to practice BSE, only 43% of those interviewed were examining themselves regularly, a figure that is little different from that of the general population. Predictors of BSE were age (older women were less likely to practice) and practice of BSE before diagnosis. Factors contributing to nonpractice were judged to be: (1) the patients' beliefs that occasional examinations by physicians are a sufficient substitute for BSE; (2) the patients' perceptions that BSE is discretionary and not truly "medical"; and (3) the fact that BSE may raise patients' anxiety over cancer without affecting its likelihood. It was concluded that the practice of BSE among diagnosed patients could be increased if physicians stress its importance and provide systematic instruction or reinstruction in its practice.

We investigated four theoretical perspectives concerning the role of social comparison (Festinger, 1954) in coping with a threatening event in a sample of breast cancer patients. According to the supercoper perspective, personal contact with comparison others is often unavailable to patients, and contact with media "supercopers"--fellow victims presented as adjusting very smoothly--may make patients feel inadequate by comparison. According to the similarity perspective, patients select comparison targets who are similar to themselves because those comparisons should be the most informative. The upward comparison perspective is predictive of comparisons to relatively advantaged or superior individuals. The downward comparison perspective leads to the prediction that under conditions of threat, individuals make comparisons to people who are inferior or less fortunate in order to enhance their self-esteem. We interviewed 78 breast cancer patients, and results of both closed-ended questions and spontaneously offered comparisons yielded a preponderance of downward comparisons. The results point to the value of using naturalistic methods for studying comparisons, and suggest a more active and cognitive role for social comparison than is usually portrayed.

Seventy-eight breast cancer outpatients were interviewed and their medical records were reviewed to document illness-related and treatment-related factors associated with psychosocial adjustment. Poor prognosis and more radical surgery both independently predicted poor psychological adjustment. The effect of type of surgery appeared to be mediated by the patient's sense of disfigurement and by changes in the sexual and affectional patterns in the marriage, rather than by prognosis or disability. Degree of dysfunction and whether or not the patient had radiation therapy or chemotherapy had no independent effects on psychological adjustment. Results point to the problematic psychosocial outcomes associated with mastectomy and, more generally, to the illness- and treatment-related factors that may place a breast cancer patient at risk for psychosocial adjustment problems.

Attributions for cancer and beliefs about control over cancer were examined for their association with adjustment to breast cancer. Although 95% of the respondents made attributions for their cancer, no particular attribution (e.g., stress, diet) was associated with better adjustment. Analyses of attributions of responsibility for the cancer to the self, environment, another person, or chance yielded only a negative relation between adjustment and blaming another person. In contrast, both the belief that one could now control one's cancer and the belief that others (e.g. the physician) could now control the cancer were significantly associated with good adjustment. Of the different types of control, cognitive control was most strongly associated with adjustment, behavior control was less strongly associated with adjustment, and information control and retrospective control were unassociated with adjustment. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.