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Indirectly Measured Self-esteem Predicts Gaze Avoidance

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Can gaze behavior be predicted by direct and indirect measures of self-esteem, and, if so, does an indirect measure of self-esteem predict gaze behavior over and above a direct measure of self-esteem? Two different affective priming tasks were developed as indirect measures of self-esteem. Facial pictures or participants' first name were used as primes. Scores on a self-esteem questionnaire, as a measure of direct self-esteem, failed to predict gaze avoidance and gaze duration. However, the size of the affective priming effect with one's first name as the prime successfully predicted gaze avoidance, over and above direct self-esteem. Higher indirect self-esteem was associated with reduced breaking of eye contact whereas lower indirect self-esteem was associated with breaking eye contact more frequently.
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... The NLT was significantly associated with defensive verbal behavior during an interview (Kernis et al., 2008). Reactiontime based variants of self-esteem APTs have also been shown to correlate with actual behaviors, specifically with an interviewer rating of nonverbal anxiety during an emotional health interview (Spalding & Hardin, 1999), gaze avoidance, and the time spent looking at the experimenter during instructions (Vandromme, Hermans, & Spruyt, 2011). ...
... As can be seen, self-reports of self-esteem have been reported to be significantly associated with an experimenter rating of self-esteem (row 2; Bluemke & Friese, 2012); observer ratings of illustrators, the ability to control posture, and the ability to control speech during a public speaking task (row 5; Rudolph et al., 2010); and defensive verbal behavior during an interview (row 8; Kernis et al., 2008). Notably, the effect sizes for the interviewer rating of negative affect during a mental health interview (row 3; Robinson & Meier, 2005) and avoiding the gaze of the experimenter during instructions (row 10; Vandromme et al., 2011) were at least as high as those reported above but not significant (probably because of small sample sizes). Altogether, previous research that employed ESE measures has provided evidence that self-reports of self-esteem are-as ISE measures are as well-able to predict actual behaviors in different social contexts. ...
... Consequently, in our study, the self-esteem EB-APT was the only indirect measure that reliably captured a component of automatically activated self-evaluation that was consequential for subsequent self-esteem-related behaviors and was thus a valid indicator of ISE. With regard to previous results, our study replicated findings that reflected the self-esteem APT's ability to predict actual behaviors above and beyond ESE measures (Spalding & Hardin, 1999;Vandromme et al., 2011). ...
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... The observation that one can use evaluative priming scores obtained with the naming task to predict relapse in abstinent smokers is in line with this reasoning. After all, what is more goal-relevant for an abstinent smoker than a stimulus linked to the act of smoking a cigarette (for related findings, see Descheemaeker, Spruyt, & Hermans, 2014;Spruyt, Hermans, De Houwer, Vandekerckhove, & Eelen, 2007;Vandromme, Hermans, & Spruyt, 2011; but see Vanaelst, 2016)? ...
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