This Mood Is Familiar and I Don't Deserve to Feel Better Anyway

Mechanisms Underlying Self-Esteem Differences in Motivation to Repair Sad Moods

Wood, Joanne V.
Heimpel, Sara A.
Manwell, Laurie A.
Whittington, Elizabeth J.

¹Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

This research was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant awarded to Joanne Wood. Study 1 was part of Sara Heimpel's dissertation, and Study 4 was Laurie Manwell's undergraduate honors' thesis, both at the University of Waterloo. We wish to thank members of Sara Heimpel's dissertation committee: John Holmes, Roger Mannell, Dianne Tice, and Erik Woody. We also are grateful to Penny Deeth, Jacqueline Robinson, Anna Sinicki, Bettina Sommersol, and Pamela Stager for their help with data collection, to John Michela for his help with the HLM analyses, to Sandra Gregory and Bjanka Pokorny for coding, and to Ramona Bobocel, John Ellard, John Jost, Carolyn Hafer, and Aaron Kay for advice about social justice. We also thank Danu Anthony, Justin Cavallo, Danielle Gaucher, Carolyn Hafer, John Holmes, Aaron Kay, Mark Leary, Denise Marigold, Lindsay Schaefer, Emily Schryer, and Steve Spencer for their comments on this article.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Joanne Wood, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1. E-mail: [email protected]

Received August 27, 2007; Revision received May 14, 2008; Accepted May 16, 2008

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96(2):p 363-380, February 2009. | DOI: 10.1037/a0012881

Why are people with low self-esteem (LSE) less motivated than people with high self-esteem (HSE) to improve sad moods? The present research examined whether feelings of personal deservingness contribute to this difference. Four experiments with undergraduate participants involved a sad mood induction, a manipulation of personal deservingness, or both. Results suggested that (a) LSEs feel less deserving of positive outcomes and of positive moods than do HSEs, (b) feelings of personal deservingness can vary with the situation, and be lowered through reminders of social rejection and personal flaws, and (c) feeling relatively undeserving dampens LSEs', but not HSEs', motivation to repair sad moods. These results have implications for the emotion regulation, self-esteem, and social justice literatures.