D UAL THEORY OF SELF

1. How non-conscious self operates in the social world: The role of implicit and explicit self-esteem on processing of facial emotion expressions Anıl Özge Üstünel, Handan Odaman, Nur Evirgen, & Ali İ. Tekcan Boğaziçi University İstanbul, Turkey Correspondence: ANİL.USTUNEL@BOUN.EDU.TR, HANDAN.ODAMAN@BOUN.EDU.TR • DUAL THEORY OF SELF • The dual theory of self posits that the self system operates through rational, deliberative or experiential, automatic systems, both of which contains models of the self and the world (Epstein, 1994). • Self involves the person’s structured and dynamic self evaluation which is mainly composed of attitudes, beliefs and memories about the self (Campbell, Trapnell, Heine, Katz, Lavallee, & Lehman, 1996). • The attitude toward the self denotes feelings and thoughts about self and appraisals of self worth, which refers to self-esteem (Huitt, 2004). • Research on self-esteem indicates that people’s conscious evaluations of their selves and their non-conscious reflection on it do not always correspond (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). • There is accumulating evidence pointing to two distinct aspects of self-esteem, one of which is explicitly held and the other, implicitly felt (Greenwald & Farnham, 2000). • Explicit self-esteem refers to the conscious evaluations with respect to how an individual feels about and appreciates oneself (Kernis, 2003). Explicit self-esteem measures provide beliefs about one’s own worth that are immediately available rather than genuine evaluations reached out of introspection (Tafarodi & Ho, 2006). • Implicit self-esteem refers to non-conscious aspect of self appraisals, defined as ‘introspectively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) effect of the self attitude on evaluation of self associated and self dissociated objects’ (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). • There is accumulating evidence that implicit and explicit self-esteem operate independently.Greenwald and Farnham (2000) show in their study by two confirmatory factor analyses that these are distinct constructs. Asendorpf, Banse, and Mücke (2002) demonstrate that explicit self-esteem relates to controlled expression of shyness, whereas implicit self-esteem measures predict spontaneous shy behavior. IMPLICIT/EXPLICIT SELF-ESTEEM AND FACIAL EMOTION PROCESSING • Conscious and non-conscious operations of self-esteem are integral to a structure that guides interactions with the social environment, since one’s self evaluation is the basis on which social knowledge is constructed (Baldwin, 1992). It provides the individual with an affective and cognitive lens through which he/she perceives and interprets the social stimuli and himself/herself in relation to it (Oyserman & Packer, 1996). • Emotion processing constitutes one major cognitive process in social interactions, defining the content and future form of relationships with others (e.g. regulating social interactions, shaping the conceptions of environment and meaning of others) (Frijda & Mesquita, 1994). • In emotion processing research, Ekman’s Facial Affect Perception Task is one of the most frequently used measures which requires subjects to label an emotion expression appearing in a face, with recent advances in his methodology. • The present study aims to explore the effects of implicit and explicit self-esteem on emotion processing of faces, using Ekman’s Facial Affect Perception Task. Recent social cognition research suggests that processing of emotional and social information is a highly subjective operation, pointing to the interdependence of self concept and identity with social cognitive processes (Abrams & Hogg, 1999). RESULTS Frequency of accurate responses was not comparable neither across self-esteem groups nor different emotion expressions, since participants made very few errors for happy and surprised expressions and negative emotions yielded very high number of errors. Thus, analyses were carried out on mean RTs for all basic emotions and on type of errors across inaccurately identified emotion expressions. ANALYSES ON MEAN RT Figure 1.Mean reaction times for discrepant and non-discrepant groups across different facial affect types. Findings: ---Fastest responses for expressions of happiness (M=2212) and surprise (M=2862) and slowest responses for expressions of anger (M=3675) and despise (M=4386) [F(6,108) = 94.73, partial η2= .840, p<.001]. ---HI-LE self-esteem group (M=3574) responded more slowly than LI-HE (M=3260) and no discrepancy groups (M=3151) for all emotions, except disgust. [F(2,113) = 4.834, partial η2= .079, p<.02]. ANALYSES ON TYPE OF ERRORS Anger Fear Figure 2. Error frequencies of discrepant and non-discrepant self-esteem groups across misidentified facial expressions for angry faces. Figure 3. Error frequencies of discrepant and non-discrepant self-esteem groups across misidentified facial expressions for fearful faces. Findings: ---There was a main effect of error type [F(5,109)=7.246, partial η2= .971, p<.001]. All comparisons proved to be significant except that the difference between error frequencies on the side of despise (M=.139) and surprise (M=.241)was marginally significant. ---The most frequent type of error was misidentifying anger as disgust while the least frequent type of error was misidentifying anger as despise and surprise across all self-esteem groups. ---Despise was the only type of error for anger expressions that showed significant variability. LI-HE self-esteem group (M=.293) misidentified anger expressionsas despise more frequently than HI-LE self-esteem (M=.129, p<.04) and no discrepancy groups (M=.030, p<.001). Findings: ---There was a main effect of error type [F(2,112)=1.255, partial η2= .691, p<.001]. All comparisons among frequency of despise (M=.863), surprise (M=1.604) and anger (M=3.256) responses given to fear expressions were significant. ---The most frequent type of error was misidentifying fear as anger while the least frequent type of error was misidentifying fear as despise across all self-esteem groups. ---LI-HE self-esteem group (M=1.062) made significantly more errors in misidentifying fear as despise than non-discrepant group (M=.648, p<.03). METHOD Participants.There were 116 undergraduate students who participated in the present study. The age range was 17 to 29, with a mean of 20.3. Materials. Implicit Self-Esteem Measure.Self-Esteem Implicit Association Test (Self-esteem IAT) was used for assessment (Greenwald & Farnham, 2000). This task shows the strength of association between the concept of self and the attribute of pleasantness. Participants are asked to categorize presented pleasant and unpleasant words, based on their perceived relation with self or other concepts they hold. Thus, it takes into account self-pleasant and other-unpleasant associations along with self-unpleasant and other-pleasant associations. For the present study, 26 pleasant, 26 unpleasant, 10 self-relevant, 10 other-relevant words were presented. Pleasant and unpleasant words selected from Göz (2003) were tested by a pilot study to asses their emotional valences. Self and other category words wereselected from Tekcan & Göz (2005) by the experimenters who examined suitability of each word for participants. Those words which would certainly suit all participants were selected as self-relevant words (like student, participant) and those words which would be certainly unsuitable for all participants were included as other-relevant words (like lawyer, professor). Each word remained on the screen until a response was made, with a 150 ms.interstimulus interval and, reaction time for each word was recorded. A D score was computed for each participant, following the guidelines explained in detail in Greenwald, Banaji, and Nosek (2003). Higher D scores indicated higher implicit self-esteem. Explicit Self-Esteem Measure.The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory, constructed by Coopersmith (1967) and adopted to Turkish by Sunar (1994) was used. It is a selfreport measure, composed of 36 statements about one’s evaluation of his/her self-worth and self-liking. Participants were asked to evaluate each sentence on the basis of its correspondence with their self views and to select one of “It suits me” or “It does not suit me” categories. A total score which could range from 0 to 36 was obtained by adding up the scores of all items for each participant, with higher scores indicating higherexplicit self-esteem. Facial Affect Perception Task.The task, programmed on E-prime software (Psychology Tools Inc.), presented 42 facial expressions of basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, despise) developed by Ekman (1975). In the practice phase, participants were presented with a total of 7 faces, each representing one basic emotion. In the test phase, participants were tested with the remaining 35 expressions of basic emotions in a randomized order. Participants were first asked to label each emotion and then to state the perceived magnitude of that emotion on a 5-point Likert type scale, with increasing intensity from 1 to 5 (1=slightly, 2=moderately, 3= pretty much, 4=very, 5=extremely). Each expression was presented for 12 sc. along with seven labeling alternatives, and it reappeared on the screen for 6 sc. for intensity rating. The inter-stimulus interval was 1 sc. Accuracy and latency (ms.) for each facial expression were recorded. Design.Three self-esteem groups were formed: High implicit-Low explicit self-esteem group (HI-LE), Low implicit-High explicit self-esteem group (LI-HE), no discrepancy group. For mean RTs, A 3(self-esteem groups)X 7(emotions) MANOVA was carried out. Procedure.Participants were divided into two groups by which implicit and explicit self-esteem tests were counterbalanced. For both groups, facial affect perception task preceded self-esteem tests. Disgust Despise Figure 5. Error frequencies of discrepant and non-discrepant self-esteem groups across misidentified facial expressions for disgusted faces. Figure 4. Error frequencies of discrepant and non-discrepant groups across misidentified facial expressions for despised faces Findings: ---There was a main effect of error type [F(5,109)=62.10, partial η2= .740, p<.001]. All comparisons proved to be significant except for the difference between disgust (M=.858) and sadness (M=.854). ---The most frequent type of error was misidentifying despise as happiness while the least frequent type of error was misidentifying despise as anger across all self-esteem groups. ---The difference between HI-LE self-esteem group (M=1.607) and LI-HE self-esteem group (M=1.202) was significant in their frequency of recognizing despise as happiness (p<.05). Findings: ---There was a main effect of error type [F(1,113)=16.41, partial η2= .127, p<.001]. There was a significant difference between fear (M=3,091) and sadness expressions (M=2.306). ---Frequency of recognizing disgust as fear in non-discrepant group (M=3.408) was significantly higher than that of HI-LE self-esteem group (M=2.759, p<.03). CONCLUSIONS • Happiness and surprise were accurately and rapidly identified, while negative emotions (sadness, disgust, despise, fear, anger) elicited inaccurate and slow responses. • Rapid and accurate responses elicited by happiness and surprise expressions were consistent with prior research which demonstrates that positive expressions take shorter time than negative expressions when the task requires a cognitive evaluation and categorization of them (Tracy & Robins, 2008). • A cultural framework can account for the higher number of errors for negative emotions, since recognition scores of negative emotion expressions in non-Western cultures are lower than those of Western cultures (Russell, 1994). • Implicit self-esteem of a person is involved in processing of negative emotions (consistent with Conner & Barret, 2005). • Low implicit self-esteem renders individuals vulnerable to negative affective experiences. Individuals tend to misread social information in accordance with their negative self-views (self-verification theory). Low implicit self-esteem group misidentified anger and fear as despise, which suggests that these negative emotions were perceived as targeting themselves. • High implicit self-esteem may protect individuals against negative affective experiences. The enhancing role of implicit self-esteem wasevident in identification of despise as happiness by high implicit self-esteem group. References References Abrams, D. & Hogg, M. A. (1999). Social identity and social cognition: Historical background and current trends. In Abrams D. & Hogg M. A. (Eds.), Social Identity and Social Cognition (1-25). Malden Mass.: Blackwell. Asendorpf, J. B., Banse, R., & Mücke, D. (2002). Double dissociation between implicit and explicit personality self concept: The case of shy behavior. Journal of Personality and SocialPsychology, 83, 380-393. Baldwin, M.W. (1992). 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