REPRESSIVE RESPONSES TO SELF-CONCEPT THREATS

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The proposed research will study the processes by which people respond to evaluations that threaten their favorable concepts of themselves. Its particular focus will be on how the interpersonal context alters the processing of this personally relevant information. Identical evaluations will be given to people in either public or private contexts, and the proposed studies will examine how these differences affect the way people attend to (vs. ignore) the threatening information, how well they recall it later, how they discriminate among different parts of it, how they think about it and construct possible refutations, and how these evaluations affect how they plan an interaction strategy. In short, it will examine the cognitive, motivational, and interpersonal aspects of responding to a self-concept threat. Repression and self-deception have long been identified as central factors in mental illness, while the maintenance of self-esteem is vital to adjustment and mental health. The proposed work will look at the processes involved in maintaining self-esteem in the face of threat, including repressive defenses. The proposed research is divided into four sections. The first project will examine immediate cognitive responses to threatening feedback in terms of various defensive options, aided by comparison of repressors with non-repressors. The second project will examine alternative forms of presenting evaluative feedback and of allowing people to peruse this feedback, and it will study how defensive motivations and interpersonal contexts alter the narration of past personal experiences. The third project will look at interpersonal aspects and consequences of these various defensive responses to threat, focusing on how people set up their interactions with others after receiving threatening feedback. The final project will test the hypothesis that some people respond to threat b a rejection of meaningful thought (as suggested by evidence about suicidal individuals), and it will examine defenses against recall of threatening material.