Negative Self-directed Affect Research Articles

Less of a man? Masculine honor beliefs influence perceptions of hypothetical sons (and their fathers) coming out as gay

Masculine Honor Beliefs comprise an ideology that it is acceptable for people (especially men) to defend their reputation through violent or aggressive measures. Previous research has shown that this ideology is associated with more disparagement of, and social distancing from, gay or effeminate men. However, little research has examined how men higher in masculine honor beliefs perceive their son coming out as gay, as well as how third-party observers perceive a father whose son comes out as gay. Across two studies (total N = 464) we examined the influence masculine honor beliefs had on a participants' levels of support or rejection toward their son coming out as gay in a hypothetical vignette scenario (Study 1) and how third-party observers perceived both the (hypothetical) father and son after the son came out (Study 2). Consistent with our hypotheses, higher levels of masculine honor beliefs were associated with more sexual prejudice, more negative perceptions of the sons who came out as gay in the vignettes (and their fathers), and stronger expectations for the father to reject the son's identity. Further, fathers experienced significantly greater negative self-directed affect highlighting the importance of studying masculinity as a factor of negative attitudes toward gay men.

Parents' Expectations for and Reactions to Children's Racial Biases.

How do parents think about and react to their children's racial biases? Across three studies (N=519) we investigated whether and how parents' Internal Motivation to Respond without Prejudice Scale (IMS) predicted standards for their children's race-related behavior, and tested parents' affective reactions to imagining their children violating their standards. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that parents (of 4- to 12-year-old children) with high IMS set more stringent standards for their children's race-related behavior than their low IMS counterparts. Upon considering their children expressing racial bias, high IMS parents reported negative self-directed affect (i.e., guilt; Studies 2 and 3), an affective response that motivates prejudice reduction in adults. The results have implications for involving parents in prejudice interventions targeting children's biases.

Promoting concern about gender bias with evidence-based confrontation

Whereas confrontations of racial bias prompt negative self-directed affect (e.g., guilt) and reduce bias, confrontations of gender bias are typically disregarded. We examined the effectiveness of an evidence-based confrontation in which participants received concrete evidence of their discriminatory gender-biased evaluations. Participants were confronted with evidence that they evaluated a female applicant for a lab manager position negatively, which would have resulted in her not being hired, and that their evaluations were more negative than an otherwise identical applicant who was male. Experiment 1 found that this confrontation activated greater guilt and, in turn, concern about expressing and regulating gender bias in the future (hereafter “future concern”), relative to participants who were confronted about gender bias but without concrete evidence of bias. Experiment 2 showed that confrontation with concrete evidence of gender bias activated guilt and future concern whether the bias was framed as viewing women as not belonging in science or as unintelligent. Experiment 3 showed that the positive effects of confronting gender bias with evidence were just as strong as a parallel confrontation of racial bias. Experiment 4 showed that the positive effects also held in a non-STEM domain, and that these effects were not dependent on the situational salience of norms opposing gender bias. Thus, a robust strategy for effective confrontation of gender bias was established. However, we discuss difficulties with implementing this strategy in many real world situations, along with implications for how best to curb gender bias through confrontation.

Training away bias: The differential effects of counterstereotype training and self-regulation on stereotype activation and application

A pressing issue concerns how to reduce stereotypic responses and discriminatory outcomes resulting from the operation of implicit biases. One possibility is that cognitive retraining, such as by repeatedly practicing counterstereotypes, can reduce implicit bias so that stereotype application will be reduced in turn. Another possibility involves motivated self-regulation, where people's awareness of their proneness to biased responses heightens negative self-directed affect, which in turn facilitates monitoring for biases and reduces stereotype application. These possibilities were tested across three experiments. In all experiments, participants who completed counterstereotype training subsequently scored lower on a measure of implicit bias, relative to untrained participants. In Experiments 1 and 2, counterstereotyping did not reduce subsequent stereotype application; in Experiment 3, counterstereotyping did reduce stereotype application, but this effect was not mediated by implicit bias scores. Participants in the motivated self-regulation condition (Experiments 2 & 3) were primed with their proneness to respond in biased ways, which increased negative self-directed affect among participants more internally motivated to respond without bias. Participants' degree of negative self-directed affect was not consistently associated with implicit bias scores. However, greater negative self-directed affect was associated with reduced stereotype application (Experiment 2) and greater rejection of racist jokes (Experiment 3). These results suggest that reductions of implicit bias through counterstereotype training do not, in turn, lead to reduced stereotype application. In contrast, the results support the viability of motivated self-regulation interventions that facilitate awareness of bias and heighten negative self-directed affect, thus creating the motivation to self-regulate stereotype application.

The benefits of job demands for employees low in self-esteem and high in trait procrastination

We integrate self-efficacy theories of motivation and distraction theories of emotion regulation to propose that job demands boost the self-evaluation and performance of employees characterized by low self-esteem and high trait procrastination. We reason that job demands minimize these individuals’ negative self-directed affect. We find support for these predictions in three experiments that manipulated the physical (Study 1) and cognitive (Studies 2 & 3) demands of a task. These task demands boosted the self-evaluation (Studies 1 & 2) and performance (Study 3) of participants high in trait procrastination and participants’ low in self-esteem, but exerted no or a negative effect on these outcomes for participants low in trait procrastination or high in self-esteem. Moreover, whereas trait procrastination and low self-esteem were associated with greater negative self-evaluation and lower performance in low job demand contexts, they showed no relationship with these negative outcomes in high job demand cont...

Willing and able: How internal motivation and failure help to overcome prejudice

Internal motivation to behave nonprejudiced reduces automatic and controlled prejudice. The present studies examined the impact of internal motivation to behave nonprejudiced on reactions to one s failure to behave nonprejudiced. In Study 1 higher levels of internal motivation led to more negative self-directed affect when failing to behave nonprejudiced, but not when failing in other domains. In Study 2 higher levels of internal motivation led to less prejudice after failure to behave nonprejudiced, but not in a non-failure condition. These findings suggest that failure to behave nonprejudiced plays a key role for highly internally motivated individuals in learning to regulate prejudice successfully.

The self-regulation of prejudice: Toward understanding its lived character

Survey and laboratory studies provide support for the self-regulation of prejudice, but it is unclear whether people similarly self-regulate in“real life. Using a phenomenological approach, 153 non-Black participants recalled racial experiences in which they responded in ways they later wished had been different. Participants internally motivated to control prejudice reported discrepancies regardless of their external motivation, but even participants low on internal motivation reported prejudice-related discrepancies if they were externally motivated. Content analysis results are presented to summarize participants discrepancy experiences. Also, most participants discrepancies produced negative self-directed affect and the self-regulation of prejudice in the future. Findings suggest that self-regulation generalizes beyond the laboratory and occurs even among people who are not internally motivated to control their prejudice.

Using a General Model of Personality to Identify the Basic Elements of Psychopathy

In the present paper, we outline why we believe that factor analyses of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised (Hare, 2003) are unlikely to yield the basic elements of psychopathy. As an alternative approach, we suggest embedding psychopathy within a broad model of general personality functioning, namely the five factor model (McCrae & Costa, 1990). Drawing on our previous work in the area using expert ratings, correlational approaches, and a "translation" of the PCL-R, we provide a consensus description of the core elements of psychopathy: extremely high interpersonal antagonism, pan-impulsivity, the absence of negative self-directed affect, the presence of angry hostility, and interpersonal assertiveness. We end with a discussion of the implications of this analysis for understanding, researching, and measuring psychopathy.

Standing up for a change: Reducing bias through interpersonal confrontation.

Three experiments examined the effectiveness of interpersonal confrontations as a means for decreasing stereotypic responding. After making stereotypic inferences about Black individuals, participants were confronted and reactions were measured across various intrapersonal and interpersonal response domains. Confrontations varied in level of hostility (Experiment 1) and whether they were expressed by a Black or White person (Experiment 2). Results indicate that although confrontations (and particularly hostile ones) elicited negative emotions and evaluations toward the confronter, participants also experienced negative self-directed affect. Furthermore, regardless of who did the confronting or how much hostility was expressed, confronted participants subsequently were less likely to provide stereotypic responses (Experiments 1-2), and the effect of the confrontation generalized to reporting less prejudiced attitudes (Experiment 3).

Self-directed versus other-directed affect as a consequence of prejudice-related discrepancies.

Personal standards for responding toward gay males and affective reactions to discrepancies were examined for low prejudiced (LP) and high prejudiced (HP) Ss in 2 studies. These standards and discrepancies involved responses varying in controllability and acceptability. Results indicated that LP Ss experienced negative self-directed affect in connection with transgressions from their nonprejudiced and well-internalized standards, regardless of the type of response. HP Ss' personal standards were quite nonprejudiced and well internalized for relatively controllable and unacceptable prejudiced responses