Abstract
BackgroundPast research examining implicit self-evaluation often manipulated self-processing as task-irrelevant but presented self-related stimuli supraliminally. Even when tested with more indirect methods, such as the masked priming paradigm, participants' responses may still be subject to conscious interference. Our study primed participants with either their own or someone else's face, and adopted a new paradigm to actualize strict face-suppression to examine participants' subliminal self-evaluation. In addition, we investigated how self-esteem modulates one's implicit self-evaluation and validated the role of awareness in creating the discrepancy on past findings between measures of implicit self-evaluation and explicit self-esteem.Methodology/Principal FindingsParticipants' own face or others' faces were subliminally presented with a Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS) paradigm in Experiment 1, but supraliminally presented in Experiment 2, followed by a valence judgment task of personality adjectives. Participants also completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale in each experiment. Results from Experiment 1 showed a typical bias of self-positivity among participants with higher self-esteem, but only a marginal self-positivity bias and a significant other-positivity bias among those with lower self-esteem. However, self-esteem had no modulating effect in Experiment 2: All participants showed the self-positivity bias.Conclusions/SignificanceOur results provide direct evidence that self-evaluation manifests in different ways as a function of awareness between individuals with different self-views: People high and low in self-esteem may demonstrate different automatic reactions in the subliminal evaluations of the self and others; but the involvement of consciousness with supraliminally presented stimuli may reduce this dissociation.
Highlights
The self is a special psychological construct evolutionarily important to human beings, and has been extensively studied in its structure and content as well as motivational and affective implications [1]
Researchers found faster responses in classifying one’s self and positive attributes by key pressing in the Implicit Association Test [11,12]. This so-called self-positivity effect has been found to extend to the self-face: Participants were more likely to judge attractive morphs rather than their actual faces or unattractive morphs as the self [13]
Informed consent was obtained from each participant before this study, and this experiment was approved by the ethics review committee of the Department of Psychology, Peking University
Summary
The self is a special psychological construct evolutionarily important to human beings, and has been extensively studied in its structure and content as well as motivational and affective implications [1]. Researchers found faster responses in classifying one’s self and positive attributes by key pressing in the Implicit Association Test (as a measurement of implicit self-esteem) [11,12]. This so-called self-positivity effect has been found to extend to the self-face: Participants were more likely to judge attractive morphs (morphed self-face with an attractive other’s face) rather than their actual faces or unattractive morphs as the self [13]. We investigated how self-esteem modulates one’s implicit self-evaluation and validated the role of awareness in creating the discrepancy on past findings between measures of implicit self-evaluation and explicit self-esteem
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