The Influence Of Romantic Rejection On Self-processing Advantage

Self is the core component of personality,and self-processing advantage is an important embodiment of healthy personality.Therefore,maintaining self-processing advantage is closely related to mental health.Previous studies have found that social threat undermined self-processing advantages.But it is unclear how romantic rejection that an individual may encounter in the process of mate selection influences self-processing advantage.Humans need reproduction and continuation,but in the process of mate selection they are likely to encounter rejection by the opposite sex,which may have a great impact on individuals’ mental health,social adjustment and later mate selection behavior.Therefore,it is necessary to systematically investigate how romantic rejection affects self-processing advantage.In addition,social threats have different effects on men’s and women’s self-processing,depending on the different needs that men and women value.In the process of mate selection,men and women attach different importance to their own appearance and quality.Men attach more importance to their own quality(such as competence),while women attach more importance to their appearance(such as facial attractiveness).However,it is to be further investigated how the rejection reasons(rejection due to quality vs.rejection due to appearance)and gender moderate the effect of romantic rejection on self-processing advantage.Therefore,there are two studies for the above issues in the current study.Study 1explores whether romantic rejection because of personality character(competence and warmth)influences self-processing advantage,and further investigates whether gender moderate this process.Study 2 explores how romantic rejection because of appearance(facial attractiveness)influences self-processing advantage,and further investigates whether gender moderate this process.In study 1,72 men and 70 women respectively received personality-character-related feedback(accepted or rejected because of lack of competence or warmth).After receiving social feedback,participants completed the label–shape pair trials in which they judged whether shapes(triangle,circle,square)and labels(“self,” “friend,” “stranger”)were matched or mismatched.The results showed that romantic rejection because of lack of competence enhances men’s self-processing advantage but doesn’t influence women’s.Men enhance their own processing advantage over their friends by reducing the processing of information about their friends.In study 2,after receiving appearance-related social feedback(rejection or acceptance),51 men and 54 women also completed the label–shape pair trials.The results showed that romantic rejection because of appearance inhibited women’s self-processing advantage but doesn’t influence men’s.Women reduce their own processing advantage over their friends by enhancing the processing of information about their friends.In conclusion,the present study revealed that the effect of romantic rejection on self-processing advantage is moderated by rejection reasons(rejection due to quality vs.rejection due to appearance)and gender.Men tend to inhabit friend-related processing to increase relative self-processing advantage when they are rejected because of lack of competence.Women tend to increase friend-related processing to decrease relative self-processing advantage when they are rejected because of appearance(facial attractiveness).