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The dark side of ambiguous discrimination: How state self‐esteem moderates emotional and behavioural responses to ambiguous and unambiguous discrimination
Author(s) -
Cihangir Sezgin,
Barreto Manuela,
Ellemers Naomi
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
british journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.855
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 2044-8309
pISSN - 0144-6665
DOI - 10.1348/014466609x425869
Subject(s) - psychology , self esteem , social psychology , task (project management) , developmental psychology , management , economics
Two experiments examine how experimentally induced differences in state self‐esteem moderate emotional and behavioural responses to ambiguous and unambiguous discrimination. Study 1 ( N =108) showed that participants who were exposed to ambiguous discrimination report more negative self‐directed emotions when they have low compared to high self‐esteem. These differences did not emerge when participants were exposed to unambiguous discrimination. Study 2 ( N =118) additionally revealed that self‐esteem moderated the effect of ambiguous discrimination on self‐concern, task performance, and self‐stereotyping. Results show that ambiguous discrimination caused participants with low self‐esteem to report more negative self‐directed emotions, more self‐concern, an inferior task performance, and more self‐stereotyping, compared to participants in the high self‐esteem condition. Emotional and behavioural responses to unambiguous discrimination did not depend on the induced level of self‐esteem in these studies.