Cognitive Processing Bias Of Self-Esteem And Its' Effects On Affective Responses

Levels of self-esteem are closely correlated with mental health, esp. with emotional health. High self-esteem has strong self-serving effect too. Self-esteem not only has division of high and low level, however, it also has many different types, and the cognitive processing biases of self-esteem include not only biases in cognitive processing ways and also biases in cognitive processing content, whose relationship with emotional health has been being disputed. Then, are there obvious differences in cognitive processing bias of different people with different self-esteem, esp. in bias of processing content? Can these possible different processing biases affect differently people's emotional health?Based on these consideration, mixed designs of 4(types of self-esteem)×2(valence of self-relevant information: positive/negative) and 3(types of cognitive processing bias)×2(time of affect measuring: before processing bias/after processing bias) were adopted in this dissertation study. They explored differences of biases in processing self-relevant information of different people with different self-esteem types and whether these possible different processing biases could also affect differently people's affective responses (an index of state emotional health) , which were the main questions solved in Study 1 and Study2, by way of combining questionnaires and experiments. A pilot study to choose material of memory test was done before formal studies in order to measure participants'memory bias (an index of cognitive processing bias). Then four types of self-esteem of undergraduate-participants were differentiated according to the four combinations of levels of explicit self-esteem (measured by Rosenberg (1965)'s Self-Esteem Scale) and implicit self-esteem (measured by IAT): secure high self-esteem, fragile high self-esteem, congruent low self-esteem and discrepant low self-esteem, in order to investigate the memory bias in self-relevant information among these four types (Study 1). And three types of cognitive processing bias were differentiated: positive processing bias, negative processing bias and without bias, in order to further explore whether they affected the participants'affective responses (measured by PANAS-R) after using them (Study 2). Because some researchers had pointed out that the most effect of self-esteem happened after negative events and self-threats could magnify self-enhanced biases, Study 3 and Study 4 continued to explore cognitive processing biases of the participants with different self-esteem after induced failure and their effects on affective responses and to explore whether there were enhanced trends compared to Study 1 and Study 2 respectively. Study 5 and Study 6 further explored whether the cognitive processing biases of the participants with different self-esteem were only a kind of strategy by controlling the time (500ms) of processing each piece of self-relevant information and whether the effects on affective responses of cognitive processing biases disappeared by controlling the possible strategy. The last study (Study 7) investigated whether this kind of influences on affective responses could last longer to contribute to stable emotional health by tracing the participants in Study 1 for a semester.Finally, based on the results of these 7 empirical researches step by step, the following conclusions can be made in this dissertation study:(1) Because many participants'explicit and implicit self-esteem were discrepant and their mental consequences (affective responses) were also different from other participants, the heterogeneity of high self-esteem does exist.(2) Participants with different self-esteem, whether different levels or different types, had different biases in processing self-relevant information, which also had different effects on their affective responses. In detail, concerning the differences among the four self-esteem groups, participants with fragile high self-esteem had more positive processing bias than other participants, and positive processing bias produced less negative affect; concerning differences in each group, anyone had positive-information processing bias relatively to negative information, and this bias buffered or reduced the participants'negative affect.(3) There were enhanced trends of positive processing bias and its effects on affective responses of people with different self-esteem after the participants had experienced self-threat of failure. In detail, concerning the differences among the four self-esteem groups, participants with fragile high self-esteem had more positive processing bias than those with low self-esteem, and those with secure high self-esteem had also positive processing bias relatively to those with congruent low self-esteem. Positive processing bias produced less negative affect and more positive affect. Concerning the differences in each group, the participants had positive-information processing bias relatively to negative information exclude those with congruent low self-esteem, and this positive processing bias reduced negative affect and increased positive affect.(4) The differences of processing bias and its effects on affective responses among the four groups disappeared when the participants processed the self-relevant information in limit time of 500ms, but the differences in each group still existed, which suggested that the cognitive processing bias as a kind of difference among different groups is a kind of strategy and the cognitive processing bias as a kind of difference in each group is possibly an automatic result and people get relative mental health consequently.(5) The effects on affective responses of different cognitive processing biases of the participants with different self-esteem were temporary and couldn't last long.