The Influence Of Self-esteem Threat On Explicit Self-positivity Bias And Implicit Self Positivity Bias

The self-positivity bias is that people attribute positive traits or outcomes to internal,stable personal traits,and negative traits or outcomes to be irrelevant to personal traits.Self-positivity bias is beneficial to maintain positive self-image and mental health.Previous studies have found that threat can increase self-serving bias,improve self-evaluation or improve the evaluation of goods owned by the self.However,these studies have ignored the effect of threat on self-positivity bias in self-information processing.Self-positivity bias plays an important role in maintaining self-esteem,so it is of great significance and value to study the influence of threat on self-positivity bias.In addition,some studies have found that explicit and implicit selfpositivity bias are two kinds of psychological processing.Therefore,the present study explored the influence of self-esteem threat on explicit self-positivity bias and implicit self-positivity bias.In experiment 1,2(threat condition: self-esteem threat,no self-esteem threat)× 2(reference condition: self,others)× 2(emotional valence: positive,negative).Using a self-referential paradigm,the two groups were asked to judge whether the personality trait words presented matched those used to describe themselves or others.The results showed that in both the self-esteem threat situation and the non-self-esteem threat situation,people responded faster to the words conforming to the self-positivity bias(self-positive words and other-negative words)than to the words not conforming to the self-positivity bias(other-positive words and self-negative words).In study 2,the influence of self-esteem threat on implicit self-positivity bias was further investigated.In Experiment 2,2(threat condition: self-esteem threat,no self-esteem threat)× 2(reference condition: self,others)× 2(emotional valence: positive,negative).In this experiment,participants were asked to judge the attributes of the personality trait words presented after the priming of "I" or "he".In other words,participants were asked whether the word was negative or positive.The results showed that in the self-esteem threat group,there was no difference in self-positive words and other-positive words.On negative words,self-relevant word reaction time is faster than other-relevant word reaction time.In the non-self-esteem threat group,people responded significantly faster to the words conforming to the self-positivity bias(self-positivity words and others’ negative words)than to the words not conforming to the self-positivity bias(others’ positive words and self-negative words).Experiment 3,2(threat condition: self-esteem,no self-esteem threat)x 2(reference conditions: self,others)x 2(emotion valence: positive,negative).Using subliminal priming task,asked participants to judge the attributes of the personality trait words after subliminally presenting self-cue and others-cue.The results showed that under the self-esteem threat condition,people responded more slowly to the words conforming to the self-positivity bias(self-positivity and others negative)than to the words not conforming to the self-positivity bias(self-negative and others positive).In the condition of no self-esteem threat,people’s response to the words conforming to the self-positivity bias(positive words of others and negative words of self)was significantly faster than that to the words conforming to the self-positivity bias(negative words of self and positive words of others).The conclusion of the present study is that people have the motivation to protect self-esteem in both the non-self-esteem threat situation and the self-esteem threat situation,and they show obvious explicit self-positivity bias in self-information processing.The implicit self-positivity bias is easily affected by situational factors and unstable,and self-esteem threat reduces the implicit self-positivity bias.