Human beings learn about themselves through social information, meaning that their self-esteem is dependent on self-referencing feedback provided by their social environment. While self-esteem has...Show moreHuman beings learn about themselves through social information, meaning that their self-esteem is dependent on self-referencing feedback provided by their social environment. While self-esteem has been comprehensively studied, the concept of self-esteem contingency (i.e., how strongly individuals update their self-esteem in response to social ego-referencing feedback) has yet to be investigated systematically. More specifically, while we have a limited understanding of this construct in adults, its expression in adolescents remains a mystery. However, developmental studies indicate that self-esteem dynamics in adults and adolescents vary, emphasising the importance of investigating this construct in all age groups. Therefore, this study examined whether adults and adolescents show differences in self-esteem contingency by investigating whether self-esteem, age, and sex influence this construct. One hundred and six adults and 64 adolescents were tasked with performing a speech in front of three alleged judges. Participants subsequently evaluated themselves and received pre-generated positive or negative feedback about their performance. Computational modelling was used to assess trial-to-trial changes in self-esteem contingency. Results revealed that adults processed positive and negative feedback very distinctly, while only a small inclination towards such two-dimensional strategies was observed in adolescents. Moreover, the data illustrated a positivity bias in adults with high self-esteem, whereas a negativity bias was found in adolescents with lower self-esteem. Furthermore, adolescents and adults did not differ in self-esteem contingency and proved more contingent on positive than negative feedback. Lastly, we found no impact of the participants’ sex on their self-esteem contingency in either age group. Overall, these findings indicate that adults have developed a self-protective strategy that allows them to incorporate positive information more strongly into their self-view, whereas this skill seems less sophisticated in adolescents.Show less
Social performance feedback received from others influences self-feelings and self-evaluations. Recent work provides initial evidence that socially anxious individuals, characterized by a...Show moreSocial performance feedback received from others influences self-feelings and self-evaluations. Recent work provides initial evidence that socially anxious individuals, characterized by a consistent negative self-view, show a negative bias for learning selfrelated information. A social speech task paradigm and a computational model were used to assess the hypothesis of whether a negative social learning bias regarding self-evaluation and self-feelings is present in subclinical socially anxious people. 106 young adults gave a speech in front of 3 judges from whom they received either positive or negative performance feedback. The feedback from the judges was simultaneously presented with the participants' own self-rating on their performance. Immediately after viewing both feedbacks, participants rated how they felt about themselves on a VAS scale. Affective Updating and an adapted Rescorla-Wagner learning model were used to assess how people changed their self-feelings over time in response to received feedback valence. Additionally, the study investigated the association between perfectionism, social anxiety and negative social feedback. Given that perfectionism is strongly related to both social anxiety and social rejection, we tested whether individuals with elevated levels of social anxiety and perfectionism would adjust their selffeelings stronger towards negative social feedback. Results did not indicate a negative social learning bias on self-feelings after receiving negative social feedback in socially anxious individuals. Also, perfectionism was not found to be a moderator between social anxiety and negative social feedback. Overall, results were non-significant, however, our study lies the groundwork and highlights the importance of further studies in this field.Show less
