Psychological Science ›› 2013, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (6): 1375-1382.

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The Nature of Implicit Self-esteem: Evidence from Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST)

  

  • Received:2012-02-01 Revised:2013-06-04 Online:2013-11-20 Published:2013-12-11
  • Contact: Fuyi Yang

内隐自尊的特性:来自EAST的证据

杨福义1,梁宁建1,陈进2,3   

  1. 1. 华东师范大学
    2. 华东师范大学心理与认知科学学院
    3. 上海交通大学心理咨询中心
  • 通讯作者: 杨福义

Abstract: Researches have shown increasing interest in implicit self-esteem in the past few years because it was demonstrated that implicit self-esteem was one of the most important components of the self and had many clinical implications. The main indirect tool used to measure implicit self-esteem these years was Implicit Association Test (IAT). However, IAT had some limitations in measuring implicit self-esteem, the most important of which was that it can only detect a relative attitude toward oneself contrast to his/her attitude toward others instead of his/her pure implicit self attitude. The Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST) developed by De Houwer (2003) could solve this problem. With randomly sampled 109 undergraduate students as subjects, using the EAST (De Houwer, 2003) developed in recent years as a indirect measure of implicit attitude, this study focused on the effectiveness of EAST on implicit self-esteem measurement and hence explore the nature of implicit self-esteem. The results indicated that: (1) people were prone to associate themselves with positive evaluating or feelings and associate others with negative evaluating or feelings, which indicated the nature of implicit self-esteem; (2) the implicit self-esteem effect could be expected to be unconscious positive evaluation for the self; (3) the implicit self-esteem effect was significantly stronger on trials where the self-referent stimulus was the name of the participant than on trials where the self-referent stimuli were generic words, demonstrating that names were more representative for the concept self than self-referent generic words; (4) participants’ implicit attitude toward others’ names was less negative than their implicit attitude toward other-referent generic words, indicating they held relatively neutral attitude toward others’ name, which had some Chinese culture implication. The present study demonstrates that EAST is valid to detect implicit self-esteem and it can measure individuals’ intensity and direction of implicit attitude toward themselves and others. EAST provides a new valid instrument for the studies on implicit self-esteem, although there is some suggestions to be followed when researchers are using it.

Key words: implicit self-esteem, Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST), Implicit Association Test (IAT)

摘要: 采用外部情绪性Simon任务(EAST)对109名大学生对代表自我和他人的刺激词的态度差异进行测量,从而探讨内隐自尊的特性。结果显示:在个体的认知图式中,对自我持有一种内隐的积极的评价或态度,对他人持有一种内隐的相对消极的评价或态度。具体表现在:(1)内隐自尊的特性是将自己与积极的评价和情感相联系,将他人与消极的评价和情感相联系;(2)自我姓名激活的积极的内隐自我态度比一般性自我词更为强烈,而他人姓名激活的消极的内隐态度比一般性非我词更弱。本研究表明,EAST能有效检测出内隐自尊效应,并可以同时获得个体对自我和他人的内隐态度的强度和方向,为内隐自尊研究提供了一种新的有效的方法,但其应用仍需谨慎。

关键词: 内隐自尊, 外部情绪性Simon任务(EAST), 内隐联想测验(IAT)