To engage or not to engage?

Social feedback, adaptive

disengagement, and
attachment theory
APSY 8917
Joshua Wilson
Final Presentation
Contingent Self-Worth Theory
Crocker and Knight (2002)
• Individuals base their self-esteem on successes and failures in
some domains more than other domains

• Specifically, positive or negative events in a highly contingent

domain are associated with fluctuations in state self-esteem,
which may contribute over time to longer-term trait SE
changes

• Placing greater worth on social contingencies such as

attractiveness and others’ approval is typically associated with
poor mental health outcomes
How do we respond to negative
social feedback? Park and Crocker (2008); Leitner,
Hehman, Deegan, and Jones (2014)

• Despite the costs involved, most people do accord high

importance to social approval and experience approval and
rejection daily

• Fluctuations in state SE are motivating and serve to regulate

behavior in order to maintain SE
• Seek success and avoid failure in highly contingent domains

• It is thus crucial to understand how contingent self-worth and

responses to negative social feedback might impact state and
trait self-esteem
• What other cognitive and affective variables might mediate or
moderate the impact of negative social feedback?
Theoretical Perspectives
• Self-protective processes can be flexibly employed across
domains, regardless of contingency, in response to
negative social feedback (e.g. adaptive disengagement)
Social approval contingency is dynamically regulated as
a response to negative social feedback

• One’s response to negative social feedback is domain

specific, determined by their contingency on that domain
and other constructs that covary with CSW’s (e.g.
attachment style)
Social approval contingency is fixed and determines
how one responds to negative social feedback
Adaptive Disengagement Buffers
Self-Esteem From Negative Social
Feedback
Leitner, Hehman, Deegan, & Jones, 2014
Engagement Regulation and
Adaptive Disengagement
• “Domain engagement” vs. contingent self worth
• Extent to which self-esteem is engaged in success/failure in
particular domains
• Described as another name for CSW’s, but…
• Engagement is conceived as relatively more fluid and subject to
regulation than contingency

• Engagement regulation
• Individuals might alter their level of engagement to feedback to
match their SE needs
• Adaptive disengagement: to protect SE, we disengage from
particular instances of negative feedback
Adaptive Disengagement
• Previous research has focused on domain-specific conceptions
of adaptive disengagement
• e.g., some individuals who experience stereotype threat come to
devalue the stereotyped task to protect their self-esteem
• But adaptive disengagement may also be a domain-
independent response to negative feedback in general
• Authors argue that engagement to instances of negative feedback
is orthogonal to engagement to domains
• Such a general tendency would be adaptive—respond to all sorts
of negative feedback by diminishing the importance of that
feedback
• The authors hypothesize that propensity for adaptive
disengagement might be a traitlike individual difference
variable
How does adaptive disengagement
fit with CSW literature?
• Individuals who have a tendency to adaptively disengage may
report lower social approval contingency following particular
social rejection experiences, reflecting disengagement from
that feedback

• This should vary relatively independently from variance in

prior social approval contingency
The present research
• Study 1 and 2: Develop a psychometrically sound
measure of adaptive disengagement (the ADS)

• Study 3: Does higher adaptive disengagement

predict better state SE in response to negative
interpersonal feedback?

• Study 4: Same as study 3 + what constitutes

disengagement? Implicit or explicit processes?
Studies 1 and 2: The Adaptive
Disengagement Scale
• I am good at “shaking off” failures and keeping a positive
attitude.
• When I perform poorly at something, I do my best to keep a
positive sense of self esteem.
• I can adapt to almost any situation to maintain my self-
esteem.
• When bad things happen to me, I try not to feel bad about
myself.
 Factor analysis confirmed latent construct
 Stable over time: .91 correlation ~1 month apart
 Good convergent and discriminant validity
Study 3: Adaptive Disengagement
Buffers Self-Esteem
• Do people with high ADS scores maintain state self-esteem
after receiving negative feedback?
• Methods:
• 61 college students, mostly White, gender balanced
• Online ball-tossing game: two computerized confederates
• Inclusion: participants received the ball 50% of the time
• Overinclusion: participants received the ball 100% of the time
• Ostracism: confederates only tossed ball to each other
• Reported on state self-esteem (3 items) and finally ADS
Study 3: Results
ADS scores did not vary by condition or by trait self-esteem
Manipulation check: one-way ANOVA showed participants in
Ostracism condition reported less feelings of belongingness
State self-esteem:
 Regressed state-self esteem by condition and ADS x Condition
 Ostracized participants had lower state self-esteem
 Ostracism x ADS interaction was marginally significant
Study 4: ADS Predicts Disengagement
from Negative Feedback
• What explains the interaction b/w ADS and rejection?
• Methods:
• 61 college students, all White, two-thirds female
• Pretested on trait self-esteem and ADS (weeks before experiment)
• Video chat manipulation
• Participants discussed personal information about themselves to a
pre-recorded confederate presented via video chat
• Confederates were matched on gender (and race)
• After speaking, participants “accidentally overheard” experimenter
and confederate discussing the participant (negative, positive, or no
feedback, pre-recorded)
• Reported on state self-esteem, social approval contingency (explicit
CSW/engagement)
• Participated in implicit CSW/engagement task
Study 4: Results
Manipulation check: one-way ANOVA showed participants in
negative feedback condition felt less acceptance, positive
feedback yielded more feelings of acceptance
ADS buffers state self-esteem:
 Negative feedback x ADS interaction was significant
 ADS did not predict state SE in positive and control, but higher
ADS  higher state SE in negative feedback condition
 Study 4: Results
• Explicit engagement (Social Approval Contingency):
• Higher ADS score  marginally lower social approval contingency
• But no interactions with feedback condition
• Implicit engagement:

Mediated
moderation
Discussion
• Adaptive disengagement appeared to emerge as a traitlike
tendency to disengage from negative feedback
• Unrelated to trait SE
• May involve implicit processes
• Not limited to particular situations or domains
• Effects held only for negative feedback—disengagement is
adaptive, but greater engagement is not?
Limitations
• No pre-test of social approval contingency—does adaptive
disengagement show a decrease in reported CSW’s?
• Experimental design may lack ecological validity
• Homogenous sample (although prior research was on stereotype threat)
• What underlies disengagement? Measured as decreased CSW, circular?
• Correlations b/w ADS and CSW’s not well explained
• High ADS score predicts lower endorsement of social approval and
other external contingencies
• Does adaptive disengagement truly “transcend domains?”
• Or are certain people more likely to disengage?
The self-esteem roller coaster:
adult attachment moderates the
impact of daily feedback
Hepper & Carnelley, 2011
Attachment Theory
• Attachment style develops in response to early caregiving
environment, impacting cognitive and emotional development
• Internal working models of self, other, and world
• Emotion regulation strategies
• Need for social acceptance as central to human development
• Two dimensions of attachment: avoidance and anxiety
• Low on both = secure attachment
• High on both = fearful/disoriented
• Also polar avoidant and anxious styles
Attachment and CSW’s
• Attachment style may partially explain the development of
particular contingencies of self worth
• In general, attachment style  affect regulation strategies for
responding to rejection CSW profile
• Prior research suggests…
• Secure attachment  high, stable SE, contingent on family support
• Avoidant attachment  high SE contingent on independence,
internal and agentic contingencies (e.g. academic competence)
• Anxious attachment low, unstable SE, highly endorse social
approval contingencies
• Fearful attachment  multiple sources of unstable SE
• Differences between attachment styles may thus be due in part
to differential patterns of SE fluctuation in response to negative
feedback
The present research
• How does attachment style moderate the impact of
interpersonal and agentic feedback on self-esteem?
• What affective or cognitive mechanisms account for this impact?

Hypotheses
1. High attachment anxiety:
1. Increases the impact of social feedback on self-esteem
2. Predicts stronger cognitive and emotional reactions to feedback
2. High attachment avoidance:
1. Decreases the impact of interpersonal feedback (especially
positive feedback); increases impact of agentic feedback
2. Increases cognitive, but not emotional reactions to agentic
feedback
3. Emotional reactions to feedback mediate impact of feedback
on state SE across attachment styles
Methods
• 175 British college students, 87% female, mostly
heterosexual and White, 58.9% in a romantic relationship
• Daily diary study over 14-day period
• Daily self-esteem, 6-item measure
• Feedback checklist with 16 interpersonal and 16 agentic
feedback events
• Half positive, half negative
• e.g. “I was invited to spend time with/felt very included by a
group of friends or date”
• “I got the sense that I looked unattractive”
• Daily partner feedback: 2 items about positive and
negative feedback from romantic partner/date
• Pretested on attachment style
Methods
• Daily reactions to specific feedback:
• Described most positive/negative
interpersonal/agentic event of the day
• Rated each event on…
• Emotional responses, positive and negative
• Importance of feedback
• Rumination on event
• Impact of this event on state SE
• Impact of this event on self-view
Results: impact of daily
feedback on daily self-esteem
Results: impact of daily
feedback on daily self-esteem
• Main effects:
• Daily SE increased in
response to more positive or
less negative feedback
• Attachment insecurity
predicted lower daily SE
• Anxious participants
reported more negative
feedback, avoidant reported
less positive
Results: impact of daily
feedback on daily self-esteem
• Summary:
• Attachment anxiety
predicted a stronger
reaction to both positive and
negative interpersonal
feedback
• Avoidance predicted a
stronger reaction to some
negative feedback and a
weaker reaction to positive
feedback
Results: reactions to feedback mediate
impact of feedback on SE
• How did people report reacting to the feedback?
• Anxious participants…
• Reported lower state SE, more negative emotions, more rumination
after negative interpersonal and agentic feedback
• Judged negative feedback to be important
• No effect for positive interpersonal feedback
• Avoidant participants…
• Reported less of an increase in state SE, less positive emotion, less
importance after positive interpersonal feedback
• Not related to rumination
• Links b/w attachment and SE were mediated by emotional reactions
• i.e., the negative feedback an anxious person received indirectly
impacted self-esteem via negative emotions, rumination, and
engagement
Discussion
• Impact of (negative) interpersonal feedback on SE was
amplified for those with higher attachment anxiety, mediated
by strong negative emotional reactions

• Impact of (positive) interpersonal feedback was mitigated for

avoidant participants, mediated by diminished positive
emotional reactions

• Both patterns reflect emotion regulation underpinnings of

attachment style development (hyperactivation vs.
deactivation of attachment system)

• Developing emotion regulation skills (such as adaptive

disengagement?) may help insecurely attached people benefit
from positive and negative social feedback
Limitations
• Limited generalizability due to all White, mostly female, young
sample
• Men, people of color may have different perceptions of and
reactions to feedback
• However, attachment/CSW links appear to hold across gender

• Diary study limitations…

• Relies on self-reporting of events
• Anxious people more likely to perceive rejection
• Avoidant less likely to perceive positive feedback
• However, avoidant people also reacted more strongly to rejection, do
they also have a lower threshold for perceiving rejection?
• Events may have varied widely in severity (unlike prior study)
• Retrospective, doesn’t capture “hot” reactions
General Discussion: Methodology comparison
Study 1: Adaptive Disengagement Study 2: Attachment
Sample White college-aged men and women White college-aged women
Design Experimental manipulation Daily diary study
• More immediate report • Delayed report
• Less realistic social feedback, • Real instances of
only one type of feedback positive and negative
(rejection) social feedback of
various types
• ADS is new, brief, highly • Attachment is well-
overlapping construct researched, distinct
• Measured implicit and explicit • Explicit only
Analysis Controlled for trait SE, but did not assess Did not assess CSW’s
CSW’s prior to study directly during the study or
control for trait SE
Did not specify cognitive or affective Identified particular
mechanisms that link engagement with mechanisms (emotional
SE change other than decrease in reactions, rumination), but
reported CSW did not adequately
measure CSW change
 General discussion
• Social feedback elicits a variety of cognitive and affective SE
maintenance processes
• There may be a general tendency to protect oneself from negative
feedback by disengaging from that feedback and/or the domain in
which it occurs, regardless of domain contingency
• But attachment style may determine how easily we can engage and
disengage with social feedback, depending on the contingency
accorded to social feedback by that attachment style
• Anxious individuals may be maladaptively over-engaging in
negative and positive social feedback
• Avoidant individuals may be maladaptively disengaging from
positive feedback
• Perhaps only securely attached individuals can consistently
adaptively disengage from particular instances of negative social
feedback
General discussion
• Further research to understand the nature of
engagement/contingency and its link to state and trait SE
• What emotional regulation mechanisms can
intervene?
• What is disengagement really?
• Is disengagement simply another way of naming
decrease in contingency, (study 1)
• Or can it be considered a particular regulatory skill akin
to emotional suppression (study 2)?
• Does the form disengagement take depend on
attachment style?
• Changes in state SE can over time lead to changes in
trait SE…what mediates this?
Questions?
References
• Crocker, J., & Knight, K. M. (2005). Contingencies of Self-Worth.
Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(4), 200–203.
http://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org.proxy.bc.edu/10.1111/j.0963-
7214.2005.00364.x
• Hepper, E. G., & Carnelley, K. B. (2012). The self‐esteem roller
coaster: Adult attachment moderates the impact of daily feedback.
Personal Relationships, 19(3), 504–520.
http://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org.proxy.bc.edu/10.1111/j.1475-
6811.2011.01375.x
• Leitner, J. B., Hehman, E., Deegan, M. P., & Jones, J. M. (2014).
Adaptive Disengagement Buffers Self-Esteem From Negative Social
Feedback. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,
0146167214549319. http://doi.org/10.1177/0146167214549319
• Park, L. E., & Crocker, J. (2008). Contingencies of self-worth and
responses to negative interpersonal feedback. Self and Identity, 7(2),
184–203.
http://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org.proxy.bc.edu/10.1080/15298860701
398808