Self-Construal Priming Modulates Self-Evaluation under Social Threat

Effects of Social Exclusion on Self-Evaluation: Domain Discrepancy Based on the Big Two Model

Prior studies have demonstrated the detrimental effects of social exclusion on an individual's self-perception. Nonetheless, existing literature has predominantly focused on its impact on global self-esteem, often neglecting the nuanced effects of various reasons for social exclusion on distinct dimensions of self-evaluation, such as agency and communion. Based on the Big Two model perspective, the present research aims to examine the differential impacts of social exclusion on the distinct dimensions of self-evaluation, namely agency and communion, considering the reasons for social exclusion. It is hypothesized that social exclusion affects different facets of self-evaluation-agency and communion-depending on the context of exclusion. Study 1 identified negative correlations between perceived social exclusion and self-evaluation measures through questionnaires, including global self-esteem and the self-concepts of agency and communion, within a sample of 483 participants (283 females). Studies 2a (n = 93; 75 females) and 2b (n = 91; 66 females), which employed a recall paradigm to manipulate social exclusion in the domains of communion and agency, respectively, revealed that communion exclusion diminished communal self-evaluation, and agency exclusion significantly reduced both agentic and communal self-evaluation. These findings highlight the necessity of distinguishing various types of social exclusion and their distinct effects on the dimensions of self-concept. The research has important implications for the development of interventions aimed at enhancing individual psychological well-being and promoting inclusive social environments.

Dispositional Self-Construal Modulates Neural Representation of Self: An ERP Study

This study aimed to investigate the influence of dispositional self-construal on self-related processing. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for a participant’s own and a famous person’s name in a three-stimulus oddball task. The results showed greater P2 and P3 amplitudes induced by one’s own than by a famous person’s name in both independent and interdependent self-construal groups. However, no N2 amplitude differences were found between the partcipant’s own name and a famous person’s name in either group. Moreover, the strength of the P2 effect (own vs. famous person’s name) was stronger in the independent than in the interdependent self-construal group, whereas the P3 effect was similar between these two groups. Thus, these findings might reflect fast modulation of self-related processing by dispositional self-construal.

Self-Construal Priming Modulates Ensemble Perception of Multiple-Face Identities

This study explored the modulatory role of independent/interdependent self-construal on ensemble perception. Two experiments were conducted to study the effect of self-construal on ensemble coding of multiple-face identities (Experiment 1) and dot size (Experiment 2) separately. Before the implicit ensemble perception task, participants in both experiments were either primed with independent or interdependent self-construal via a well-validated pronoun circle task, in which they were exposed to either singular ("I," "me," and "my") or plural ("We," "us," and "our") pronouns in essays. The results showed that interdependent self-construal (vs. independent self-construal) featured as global processing and emphasizing interconnectedness with others enhanced the ensemble coding of high-level features (e.g., identity in Experiment 1) but not of low-level features (e.g., size in Experiment 2). To the best of our knowledge, this study was the first to investigate the role of self-construal on ensemble representations. In sum, the results of the current study supported the domain-specific mechanism of ensemble perception on one hand, and extended the effect of self-construal on single face recognition to multiple face recognition on the other hand.