When self-worth is threatened: the role of perfectionism and contingencies of self-worth in desire for social affiliation.

Abstract

Even though social affiliation is largely beneficial in times of threat, certain dispositions may hinder people from tapping on this useful resource. We are interested in how perfectionism and contingencies of self-worth may affect people’s social affiliation desires after a threat. We threatened participants’ self-worth through poor performance in a cognitive task, and then measured their social affiliation desires after the threat. Results showed that higher levels of perfectionism were associated with lesser social affiliation desires with close others. We also found that higher levels of Academic Competence and Competition contingencies of self-worth were associated with lower social affiliation desires with close others, but higher social affiliation desires with new others. Limitations, future directions and implications are also discussed.