Person X situation interactionism in self-encoding (I am...when...): implications for affect regulation and social information processing.

Although Person X Situation (P X S) interactionism is central in current social-cognitive conceptions of personality organization, its implications for the encoding of the self remain unexplored. Two studies examined the causal role of P X S interactionism in self-encoding on affect regulation and discriminative social perception. Following failure (Studies 1 and 2) and success (Study 2) ideation, participants were prompted to encode the self either in P X S interactionist terms (I am...when...) or in traitlike unconditional terms (I am...). Interactionist (compared with unconditional) self-encoding led to less affective extremity, suggesting that such encoding may prevent individuals from generalizing specific success and failure experiences to the self as a whole. Study 2 also found that interactionist self-encoding attenuated the endorsement of global stereotypes, suggesting that such encoding may enhance fine-grained social perception as well.

Regulating the interpersonal self: strategic self-regulation for coping with rejection sensitivity.

People high in rejection sensitivity (RS) anxiously expect rejection and are at risk for interpersonal and personal distress. Two studies examined the role of self-regulation through strategic attention deployment in moderating the link between RS and maladaptive outcomes. Self-regulation was assessed by the delay of gratification (DG) paradigm in childhood. In Study 1, preschoolers from the Stanford University community who participated in the DG paradigm were assessed 20 years later. Study 2 assessed low-income, minority middle school children on comparable measures. DG ability buffered high-RS people from interpersonal difficulties (aggression, peer rejection) and diminished well-being (e.g., low self-worth, higher drug use). The protective effect of DG ability on high-RS children's self-worth is explained by reduced interpersonal problems. Attentional mechanisms underlying the interaction between RS and strategic self-regulation are discussed.