Tomoko Ikegami

Fear of negative evaluation moderates effects of social exclusion on selective attention to social signs

Previous studies demonstrated that fear of negative evaluation (FNE) moderates responses to exclusion in late-stage social outcomes (e.g., social judgements and behaviours). People with low levels of FNE show affiliative responses, feeling compelled to recover their sense of belonging, whereas people with high levels of FNE do not. This study examined whether FNE also moderates responses to exclusion in early-stage interpersonal perception, manifested in selective attention. The experiment using a dot-probe task revealed that exclusion led participants with low levels of FNE to increase attention to signs of social acceptance (i.e., smiling faces). It also revealed that exclusion led those with high levels of FNE to pay more attention to signs of social threat (i.e., angry faces) relative to those of social acceptance. Thus, exclusion makes the motivation to protect oneself from social threats dominant over the motivation to reestablish social bonds among those who fear negative evaluation.

Precursors and Consequences of In-Group Disidentification: Status System Beliefs and Social Identity

The present study explores the notion of disidentification as distinct from nonidentification, and it investigates its precursors and consequences in intergroup relations. It is hypothesized that, for students attending a moderate-status university, belief in a status system of academic elitism leads to disidentification (not nonidentification) with ones own moderate-status university, which, in turn, is associated with derogation of other lower status universities and enhancement of other higher status universities. Participants completed scales of disidentification and (non)identification, academic elitism measures, and participated in a trait evaluation task in which they rated the trait descriptiveness of specific universities that varied in relative status. The hypothesis received support regarding (a) the relation between status beliefs and disidentification and (b) the relation between disidentification and perceptions of a lower status out-group target. The author discusses these results in terms of the paradoxical mechanisms involved in bolstering the status quo among disidentified individuals.

The role of state self-esteem in positive mood effects on person impression: When does a positive mood lead to a favorable view of others?

: Subjects in a positive or a neutral mood were engaged in an impression formation task (Experiment 1), and in a word fragment completion task (Experiment 2). A self-referent versus other-referent sentence completion task was used to induce a positive mood state. As a result, the subjects exhibited mood congruent effects on impression ratings in the self-referent but not in the other-referent mood induction condition. Word completion data, however, indicated that relevant traits (i.e., friendly traits) had been equally activated across the two mood induction conditions. It was also demonstrated that the self-referent induction procedure was effective in enhancing the level of self-esteem, whereas the other-referent one was not. The results converged to suggest that the enhancement in state self-esteem accompanying the self-referent procedure might be relevant to positive mood effects on person impression. This indicates the limitation of the mood priming model.