The Research Of Implicit Self-esteem Compensation In The Threatening Situation

Self-esteem is one of the hot topics and important questions for discussion in social cognition research. Many researchers have explored steady of self-esteem. In the situation of threatening self-esteem, in order to know the function of self-esteem, the regularity of how implicit self-esteem and explicit self-esteem change will be discussed.In the section of background, the concept of self-esteem and implicit self-esteem is introduced, the function of implicit self-esteem and explicit self-esteem is summarized, and the history of research on implicit self-esteem compensation (ISEC) and explicit self-esteem compensation (ESEC) is reviewed. Basically, the purpose of this paper is addressed.In the first experiment, implicit association test (IAT) and Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale (SES) are used to measure the level of implicit and explicit self-esteem. The intelligence-common sense questionnaire is used to verify whether ISEC or ESEC will appear in threatening situation.In the second experiment, cognitive disturbance, time delay and other factors are added to explore steady of ISEC.In the third experiment, influence of emotional disturbance is observed. And the style of emotional disturbance is discriminated to know the implication of emotional arousement. Moreover, through discriminating the material between cognition and emotion, we can further know the relation among negative stimuli, negative emotion and implicit self-esteem. On the method, signature effect is also used to be an index of implicit self-esteem level.The result got the following findings: 1. Both threatening situation and threatening stimuli can cause ISEC which is irrelevant to the nature of material under the environmental press, whose purpose is to control anxiety arisen from stimuli and environment. 2. Cognitive disturbance and emotional disturbance is extremely easy to suppress ISEC and implicit self-esteem shows unsteady. 3. Explicit self-esteem which is relatively steadier is insensible for self-esteem threatening. 4. Positive emotion and facing to self-esteem threatening directly is more effective than suppression to cope with anxiety and maintain explicit self-esteem.