Modulation of self-esteem in self-and other-evaluations primed by subliminal and supraliminal faces

“That is, people’s self-image is often shaped according to the results of comparing with others when exposed to stimuli related to others [33,34].”

“For example, indivdiuals typically judged the self more positively than they do to others [2,5,6], and the information that was more positive was thought as more self-descriptive [5,7].”

“However, self-esteem did not modulate participants’ implicit self-evaluation in Experiment 2, which is consistent with past findings of the dissociated patterns between implicit self-evaluation and explicit self-esteem with supraliminal presentation of self-related stimuli [10,48] or masked priming methods [18,20].”

“, socially anxious, low in self-esteem, depressive) are less likely to show self-postivitiy than those with positive self-views [37,38].”

“, socially anxious, low in self-esteem, depressive) are less likely to show self-postivitiy than those with positive self-views [37,38].”

“This would ensure the invisibility and unconsciousness for participants to the presented stimuli [22,23,24], and allow us to examine and validate the positivity nature of subliminal self-evaluation in a more stringent condition.”

“The self is a special psychological construct evolutionarily important to human beings, and has been extensively studied in its structure and content as well as motivational and affective implications [1].”

“However, self-esteem did not modulate participants’ implicit self-evaluation in Experiment 2, which is consistent with past findings of the dissociated patterns between implicit self-evaluation and explicit self-esteem with supraliminal presentation of self-related stimuli [10,48] or masked priming methods [18,20].”

“This would ensure the invisibility and unconsciousness for participants to the presented stimuli [22,23,24], and allow us to examine and validate the positivity nature of subliminal self-evaluation in a more stringent condition.”

“Interestingly, while these results were in line with the supposed behavioral patterns of self-esteem, they seemed to be inconsistent with past research that suggests disassociations between explicit and implicit self-esteem [46,47].”

“One is that self-esteem itself gives rise to different types of self-views: High self-esteem is characterized by a general fondness and love for oneself, whereas low self-esteem is associated with mildly positive or ambivalent feelings toward oneself [35,36].”

“The rich information and special salience of the self-face for being a face and self-referential at the same time [26,27], make it a good stimulus for studying self-related processing, especially self-evaluation.”

“One is that self-esteem itself gives rise to different types of self-views: High self-esteem is characterized by a general fondness and love for oneself, whereas low self-esteem is associated with mildly positive or ambivalent feelings toward oneself [35,36].”

“They also perceived morphs of their own faces as more trustworthy than morphs of others’ faces [14].”

“This would ensure the invisibility and unconsciousness for participants to the presented stimuli [22,23,24], and allow us to examine and validate the positivity nature of subliminal self-evaluation in a more stringent condition.”

“Secondly, unlike previous research on implicit self-evaluation that mostly relied on semantic materials [25], our study used face stimuli as primes.”

“However, these past findings were often based on examining data from different types of measures, i.e., self-report esteem questionnaires vs. the IAT.”

“Past self-evaluation research, such as Spalding and Hardin’s [20], was not designed to examine other-related evaluation, and therefore comparisons were made between self and generic nonself neutral stimuli.”

“These effects have mostly been observed in implicit ways: Stimuli associated with the self, such as the letters in one’s own name or the first person pronouns, were tended to be evaluated more positively than stimuli that were not [8,9,10].”

“That is, people’s self-image is often shaped according to the results of comparing with others when exposed to stimuli related to others [33,34].”

“Similarly, it has been found that when confronting selfthreats inividuals with high self-esteem showed amplified selfpositivity [39] and those with low self-esteem showed selfdepreciation [41].”

“Researchers also found faster responses in classifying one’s self and positive attributes by key pressing in the Implicit Association Test (as a measurement of implicit self-esteem) [11,12].”

“Similarly, it has been found that when confronting selfthreats inividuals with high self-esteem showed amplified selfpositivity [39] and those with low self-esteem showed selfdepreciation [41].”

“The rich information and special salience of the self-face for being a face and self-referential at the same time [26,27], make it a good stimulus for studying self-related processing, especially self-evaluation.”

“Comparing the accuracy of participants’ judgments in such a 2AFC task with the chance level has been widely used as a rigorous method to check for the presence of awareness in subliminal research [43,44].”

“While Baldwin’s study [30] suggests that internalizing opinions of specific others can affect self-evaluations, spontaneous, low resource-consuming social comparison is another major source of self-evaluation [32].”

“For example, ratings of one’s own face image (compared with those of others) have been found to positively correlate with explicit embarrassment ratings and activation of brain regions related to self-evaluation [28].”

“Studies considered to be more implicit employed the masked priming method, usually with less-than-50ms presentation of self-related stimuli, including faces [17], names [18], or identity-relevant words [19].”

“Even in studies that included ‘‘others’’ as primes, such as in Baldwin’s [30], the focus was often on how the presence of these stimuli directly affected self-related evaluations and experiences (but see [31] for discussions of other-related evaluation).”

“It has been widely established that people evaluate self-related information in a way to maintain their self-esteem [2,3,4].”

“However, self-esteem did not modulate participants’ implicit self-evaluation in Experiment 2, which is consistent with past findings of the dissociated patterns between implicit self-evaluation and explicit self-esteem with supraliminal presentation of self-related stimuli [10,48] or masked priming methods [18,20].”

“Similarly, exposure to pictures of self and unattractive others (compared with pictures of self and attractive others) implicitly enhances activation in the brain areas involved in self-relatedness and reward processing [29].”

“However, recent research has begun to argue for the very need of attention resources for the priming effect as well as possible influences of participants’ expectations or motivations in these traditional masked priming methods [21].”

“However, these past findings were often based on examining data from different types of measures, i.e., self-report esteem questionnaires vs. the IAT.”

“Studies considered to be more implicit employed the masked priming method, usually with less-than-50ms presentation of self-related stimuli, including faces [17], names [18], or identity-relevant words [19].”

“These effects have mostly been observed in implicit ways: Stimuli associated with the self, such as the letters in one’s own name or the first person pronouns, were tended to be evaluated more positively than stimuli that were not [8,9,10].”

“We know that even subliminal exposure to images of one’s own body 162 automatically activates positive self-associations [37,38] and thus we argue that perceptions of self163 similar bodies may activate self-associations in the same way.”

“This may be the case even when the stimuli are subsequently masked so that they are not available for conscious report (cf. Tao et al., 2012).”

“Individuals with high self-esteem tend to have a self-positivity bias [Tao et al., 2012] and increasingly research is showing overlap between neural substrates in the cortical midline system involved in selfreferential processing and self-esteem [Frewen et al., 2013; Yang et al., 2012, 2014].”

“For instance, using continuous flash suppression to minimize awareness for faces (self vs. other), Tao et al. (2012) found an effect of unconscious faces on a following target word which participants judged as either positive or negative in valence.”

“with mildly positive or ambivalent feelings toward oneself [6,7].”

“These findings may be explained by the short intervention period and the complexity of factors that influence the self-esteem and the possibility of change (64, 65).”

“…types (Naber et al., 2010; van Ee, 2005), as well as the influence of individual differences and semantic context (e.g., Geng et al., 2012; Gray et al., 2009; Mudrik, Breska et al., 2011; Mudrik, Deouell et al., 2011; Nagamine et al., 2007; Paffen et al., 2011; Sheth & Pham, 2008; Tao et al., 2012).”

“The second factor considered in this study is self-esteem which describes how an individual evaluates self as high or level in relationship to self-worth and self-competent vis-à-vis other individuals (Tao et al., 2012) .”