Gender Differences in Implicit Self-Esteem Following a.pdfVIP

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology © 2013 American Psychological Association 2013, Vol. 105, No. 4, 688–702 0022-3514/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0033769 Gender Differences in Implicit Self-Esteem Following a Romantic Partner’s Success or Failure Kate A. Ratliff Shigehiro Oishi University of Florida University of Virginia This research examined the influence of a romantic partner’s success or failure on one’s own implicit and explicit self-esteem. In Experiment 1, men had lower implicit self-esteem when their partner did well at a “social intelligence” task than when their partner did poorly. Women’s implicit self-esteem was unaffected by partner performance. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that Dutch men’s implicit self-esteem was negatively affected by their romantic partner’s success. In Experiment 4, we replicated Experiments 1–3 in both the academic and social domains, and in Experiment 5, we demonstrated that men’s implicit self-esteem is negatively influenced by thinking about a romantic partner’s success both when the success is relative and when it is not. In sum, men’s implicit self-esteem is lower when a partner succeeds than when a partner fails, whereas women’s implicit self-esteem is not. These gender differences have