RESPONSE LATENCY AS AN INDEX OF TEMPORARY SELF-EVALUATION

This study used response latencies to record differences in evaluative self-judgements that result from social experiences. Immediately after receiving either positive, negative, or no evaluative feedback, subjects completed a task on a microcomputer that recorded the latencies of their responses to various prime/adjective pairings. The primes were designed to activate either self-conceptions, conceptions of an object, or conceptions of a person other than the self. These were paired with either positive, negative, or neutral self-descriptive adjectives. Subjects judged whether the adjective could ever describe the prime and responded by pressing a "yes" or "no" key. As predicted, when the self was primed, response latencies for positive adjectives were significantly shorter after positive evaluative feedback than after negative feedback. Latencies for neutral and negative adjectives as well as for primes other than the self did not differ as a function of evaluative feedback.