Self-esteem Affects Processing Of Agentic And Communal Information

Self-esteem is an important part of the self which is closely related to the fundamental dimensions of social cognition.The fundamental dimensions of social cognition include agency and communion.Specifically,agency refers to people’s efforts to control the environment,to assert themselves,to experience competence,achievement,and power,which is the traits relating to goal-achievement and showing their abilities(e.g.‘smart’ and ‘stupid’);while communion refers to individual’s desire to establish relationships,to cooperate and to merge with others,which is the traits linking to moral judgment and social connection(e.g.‘kind’ and ‘ruthless’).There is a lot of evidence from previous researches that supports the same conclusion--self-esteem is more related to agency than communion.But these studies have mainly taken the self as the cognitive object.However,self-esteem is closely related to the social world.As a stable and lasting personality trait,trait self-esteem also affects people’s social processing.But,the effect of self-esteem on agentic/communal social processing has been rarely discussed by scholars.On the one hand,in daily life,people will obtain information about themselves and others through social comparison.In collectivism culture,individuals often make upward comparison for the purpose of self-improvement,and upward comparison usually induces envy.Previous studies involving upward comparison haven’t systematically distinguished the content of upward comparisons in terms of agency and communion and explored the differences in envy induced by the two types of upward comparison,and the influence of self-esteem in it was even more blank.Although previous studies have found the effect of self-esteem on envy in the process of upward comparison,it is not clear whether the effect of self-esteem on envy in the process of upward comparison is moderated by the fundamental dimensions of social cognition.Therefore,it is necessary to explore the differences in envy induced by two-dimensional comparison,and further the influence of self-esteem on envy induced by upward comparison under the framework of agency and communion.On the other hand,in interpersonal interaction,individuals will more or less face the feedback or evaluation from others.Previous studies have found that self-esteem affects the perception of others’ feedback.However,similarly,when studying the influence of self-esteem on perception of others’ feedback,predecessors did not distinguish the content of others’ feedback into agency and communion.Is the effect of self-esteem on perception of others’ feedback reflected in the agency content or the communal content? At the same time,corresponding feedback from others,it is unknown what role the self-evaluation plays in the processing.In addition,although the behavioral research on the fundamental dimensions of social cognition is fruitful,the corresponding research on the neural mechanism of the fundamental dimensions of social cognition is relatively scarce,and self-esteem is not taken into account in these limited studies.Based on the close relationship between self-esteem and agentic self-evaluation,therefore,the brain neural activity related to self-esteem in the process of agentic self-evaluation is also the core issue that we pay attention to.From the perspective of social comparison,the study1 discussed the differences in envy induced by the agentic/communal upward comparison and further the impact of self-esteem in it.The study used a within-subject design that included a total of four task conditions(agentic upward comparison,communal upward comparison,agentic control condition,and communal control condition).63 subjects were asked to respectively evaluate the envy feeling of different conditions.Results showed that compared with the communion,upward comparison of agency induced more envy,and individuals also want to have a more positive agentic traits.These findings correspond to the characteristics of the agency,showing agency is more relevant with individual own interests,thus the individuals expect to have the positive agentic traits to reach their own purpose and feel more envy when facing the one have more positive agentic traits.In addition,when further exploring the effect of self-esteem on envy,the study failed to find a significant effect of self-esteem.The possible reason might be that due to the influence of social approval,people didn’t express their envy.Starting from other people’s feedback and self-evaluation,the study2 investigated the effect of self-esteem on the perception of others’ agentic/communal feedback and the role of corresponding self-evaluation in it,and further used fMRI to explore the neural mechanism related to self-esteem in the agentic self-evaluation.The study still adopted a within-subjects experimental design,and 36 subjects need to evaluate the self and others’ feedback based on different dimensions(agency/communion).The results showed that in both self-evaluation and others’ feedback,self-esteem was positively correlated with agentic evaluation,which indicated that self-esteem could affect individuals’ perception of others’ agentic feedback rather than others’ communal feedback.Further to verify the role of agentic self-evaluation in it,we found that agentic self-evaluation completely mediated the relationship between self-esteem and others’ agentic feedback evaluation,which was consistent with self-verification theory.At the same time,the fMRI results showed that self-esteem was negatively associated with the activation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and thalamus during agentic self-evaluation,indicating that individuals with different level of self-esteem have different self-attitudes and self-concept clarity in the process of agentic self-evaluation.The research shows that: in the process of upward comparison,compared with communal traits,individuals are more envious of individuals with more positive agentic traits,which may be due to that the agency can bring more benefits to individuals themselves,and thus individuals prefer to have more positive agentic traits.In the perception process of others’ feedback,compared with communion,self-esteem is still more closely related to agency,and self-esteem can affect the perception of others’ agentic feedback through the agentic self-evaluation.In addition,the neural results suggest that compared individuals with high self-esteem,individuals with low self-esteem are more likely to hold self-critical attitudes and have a more ambiguous self-concept in the process of agentic self-evaluation.