Notable publications
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Dr. Jennifer Crocker is a professor and Ohio Eminent Scholar in Social Psychology at Ohio State University. [1] She is also a former president of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. [2] Her publications are on the subject of self-esteem and the contingencies and interpersonal goals that individuals have that are a clear reflection of their level of self-esteem.
She received her BA in psychology from Michigan State University, and her Ph.D. in Psychology and Social Relations from Harvard University in 1979 with a thesis on "Schemas, hypothesis-testing, and intuitive assessments of covariation" [3] She was subsequently assistant professor of psychology at Northwestern University(1979-1985), Professor at the University of Buffalo (1985-1995), Research Professor at the Institute for Social Research and Claude Steele Collegiate Professor of psychology at the University of Michigan (1995-2010). She came to Ohio State in June 2010.
She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. She is President-elect of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and has received the Lifetime Career Award from the International Society for Self and Identity. She was American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow of 2019. [4]
Crocker studies self-esteem, [5] contingencies of self-worth, and the costs of pursuing self-esteem. She also emphasizes interpersonal goals that are often involved in relationships.
Crocker is particularly notable for her research on contingencies of self-worth or contingent self-esteem. She created a scale called the Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale. This scale, made up of 65 items, evaluates these contingencies of self-worth and places them in two major categories. She argues that contingencies of self-worth are domains in which self-worth was either externally or internally validated. Contingencies that were considered externally validated included domains such as appearance, competition, and the approval of others. Contingencies that were considered internally validated were family support, virtue, and religious faith. [6] Crocker surmised that it was these contingencies that defined a person's perception of their own self-worth. Because of this emphasis on contingency, level of self-esteem was no longer the issue of concern. Rather, where a person decides to stake his/her self-worth will influence his/her behavior, and depending on where the validation is placed, this behavior could either have costs or benefits. [7] Furthermore, Crocker has studied the effects of contingent self-worth on psychological vulnerability and negative behavior. [8] She is especially interested in how people search for self-esteem by pursuing success in certain areas of life, and how this search affects other human needs such as learning, relationships, self-regulation, and mental and physical health. Crocker has also studied how these variables of self-esteem relate to a person's ability to receive criticism. Through this line of research, she has gone on to research how self-worth defines a person's goals and the kind of motivation that in turn allows for a person to achieve these goals. Crocker acknowledges the benefits of pursuing self-esteem, but her research focuses mainly on the costs because she believes people are often oblivious to the negative effects. She believes that an optimal level of self-esteem may only be achieved in the complete eradication, or absence of, the pursuit itself. [9] Crocker further stipulates that anyone who forms goals based on their own inner values, without any external validation, possesses the kind of motivation that will successfully drive them to achieve these goals, without any costs to the self.
Crocker's research also includes applications for her hypothesis on self-esteem and contingencies of self-worth. This research addresses depressive symptoms and alcohol use in college students and the correlation (if any) between the negative behavior and one's self-esteem. The first application is a study on depression in which first-year college students were given assessments during new student orientation and then again during second semester. This study showed that students who pursued self-esteem based on external contingencies (appearance, competition, and the approval of others) showed a significantly higher probability of developing symptoms of depression. [10] According to the research found in this study, low self-esteem is most likely not the cause, but yet a very important symptom relating to the depressive symptoms of college freshmen. A second application of self-esteem gave promising results to pursuing self-esteem, although most of Crocker's research emphasizes the costs to pursuit of self-esteem. Crocker's study of the alcohol use of students uncovered that low self-esteem is not a predictor of alcohol use, but contingencies of self-worth correlated with internal validation (family support, virtue, and religious faith) did predict drinking behavior [11] This shows that some of the contingencies common with the pursuit of self-esteem influence drinking, but levels of self-esteem itself does not. More recently, her research has looked into egosystem and ecosystem goals and their effects on goal achievement, support, responsiveness, and mental health including stress, anxiety, and depression. Egosystem goals are when people only focus on their own needs and desires and ecosystem goals are when people realize they have a connection with others. Crocker found that having an ecosystem could improve relations between different groups. [12] Intergroup relationships are challenging because of the different social identities, but having ecosystem goals can greatly improve these relations. Egosystem goals can cause destructive interactions, while ecosystem goals can create positive relations because they support, understand, and care for them and have better communication skills. [13] Her current research seeks to examine how interpersonal goals shape physiological processes and how they affect other people. She is also studying the effects of interpersonal goals for cross-race relationships.
In recognizing the importance of self-image, Crocker has dedicated a great majority of her research to this idea as it relates to interpersonal goals, which are goals meant to attain, maintain, or avoid a specific end state for the partner or the relationship, such as to help the partner, maintain closeness, or avoid rejection. [14] She relates this to the self by classifying interpersonal goals according to two different outlooks. Those who adopt a narrowly self-interested egosystem perspective tend to prioritize their own needs and desires even at the expense of others. [15] Other people are only deemed to be important if they are able to potentially satisfy or stand in the way of one's own needs and desires. In this perspective, people have what she calls self-image goals. Crocker suggests this perspective causes people to be concerned with the impressions others hold of them. Job interviews, college applications, and the initial stages of a relationship require people to convey an accurate yet glorified conception of self because they want to be seen as having desirable qualities when engaging with others. [16] People with self-image goals are only concerned with others because they withhold the ability to give approval, inclusion, and validation. Her research emphasizes the cost of self-image goals because they lead people to feel competitive, fearful, confused, depressed, and anxious. [16] In contrast, when people have a broader ecosystem perspective, they tend to give priority to the needs of the self and others. [15] Other people are important because the well-being of one person may indirectly affect the well-being of all in a biological ecosystem. People who have an ecosystem perspective have what Crocker calls compassionate goals. These individuals are equally concerned with the well-being of others and see their own needs and desires as a part of a greater system. An individual's need to belong can be satisfied by being in close relation with others. [16] When people shift their focus to be supportive of close others rather than focus on the image others have of them, they are more responsive. People are more responsive when they have compassionate goals because these goals are motivated by a genuine concern for the well-being of others. As a result, the increase in responsiveness increases others' regard and the individual's own self-esteem. [17] An increase in responsiveness enables people to make a difference in others' lives, which in return increases their self-esteem and relational value.
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Her most widely cited publication "Social stigma and self-esteem: The self-protective properties of stigma.", [18] published when she was at the University of Buffalo, has been cited 3378 times [19] Her second most cited paper, A collective self-esteem scale: Self-evaluation of one's social identity [20] has been cited 1721 times. In all, she has published 38 papers with over 100 citations in Google Scholar. [19]
Self-esteem is confidence in one's own worth, abilities or morals. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs about oneself as well as emotional states, such as triumph, despair, pride, and shame. Smith and Mackie (2007) defined it by saying "The self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, is the positive or negative evaluations of the self, as in how we feel about it ."
Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group, or between social groups. The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision-making behaviour, tracking the spread of diseases in society, creating effective therapy techniques, and following the emergence and popularity of new ideas and technologies. These applications of the field are studied in psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, epidemiology, education, social work, leadership studies, business and managerial studies, as well as communication studies.
In the psychology of self, one's self-concept is a collection of beliefs about oneself. Generally, self-concept embodies the answer to the question "Who am I?".
Self-handicapping is a cognitive strategy by which people avoid effort in the hopes of keeping potential failure from hurting self-esteem. It was first theorized by Edward E. Jones and Steven Berglas, according to whom self-handicaps are obstacles created, or claimed, by the individual in anticipation of failing performance.
In-group favoritism, sometimes known as in-group–out-group bias, in-group bias, intergroup bias, or in-group preference, is a pattern of favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, in allocation of resources, and in many other ways.
Perfectionism, in psychology, is a broad personality trait characterized by a person's concern with striving for flawlessness and perfection and is accompanied by critical self-evaluations and concerns regarding others' evaluations. It is best conceptualized as a multidimensional and multilayered personality characteristic, and initially some psychologists thought that there were many positive and negative aspects. Maladaptive perfectionism drives people to be concerned with achieving unattainable ideals or unrealistic goals that often lead to many forms of adjustment problems such as depression, anxiety, OCD, OCPD and low self-esteem. These adjustment problems often lead to suicidal thoughts and tendencies and influence or invite other psychological, physical, social, and further achievement problems in children, adolescents, and adults. Although perfectionist sights can reduce stress, anxiety, and panic, recent data, compiled by British psychologists Thomas Curran and Andrew Hill, show that perfectionistic tendencies are on the rise among recent generations of young people.
Sociometer theory is a theory of self-esteem from an evolutionary psychological perspective which proposes that self-esteem is a gauge of interpersonal relationships.
Social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group.
Self-compassion is extending compassion to one's self in instances of perceived inadequacy, failure, or general suffering. Kristin Neff has defined self-compassion as being composed of three main elements – self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
Self-enhancement is a type of motivation that works to make people feel good about themselves and to maintain self-esteem. This motive becomes especially prominent in situations of threat, failure or blows to one's self-esteem. Self-enhancement involves a preference for positive over negative self-views. It is one of the three self-evaluation motives along with self-assessment and self-verification . Self-evaluation motives drive the process of self-regulation, that is, how people control and direct their own actions.
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes are sometimes overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information, but can sometimes be accurate.
In social psychology, collective narcissism is the tendency to exaggerate the positive image and importance of a group to which one belongs. The group may be defined by ideology, race, political beliefs/stance, religion, sexual orientation, social class, language, nationality, employment status, education level, cultural values, or any other ingroup. While the classic definition of narcissism focuses on the individual, collective narcissism extends this concept to similar excessively high opinions of a person's social group, and suggests that a group can function as a narcissistic entity.
Contingent self-esteem (CSE) is self-esteem based on the approval of others or on social comparisons. Certain events will shape one's self-esteem when the individual bases their self-worth on the outcome of those events. The success or failure of any situation can result in fluctuations of an individual's self-esteem. A manifestation of someone with contingent self-esteem is excessive self-consciousness. Such excessive self-consciousness, as occurs with contingent self-esteem, involves extreme criticism of one's self, concern of how they are perceived by their peers, and feelings of discomfort in social settings. One's self-esteem is directly affected when domains of contingencies are used to measure one's self-worth. Self-esteem can also be affected when an individual compares their appearance or success to that of someone else or when their self-esteem is contingent to the relationships around them.
Interdependence theory is a social exchange theory that states that interpersonal relationships are defined through interpersonal interdependence, which is "the process by which interacting people influence one another's experiences"(Van Lange & Balliet, 2014, p. 65). The most basic principle of the theory is encapsulated in the equation I = ƒ[A, B, S], which says that all interpersonal interactions (I) are a function (ƒ) of the given situation (S), plus the actions and characteristics of the individuals in the interaction. The theory's four basic assumptions are 1) The Principle of Structure, 2) The Principle of Transformation, 3) The Principle of Interaction, and 4) The Principle of Adaption.
Relationship contingent self-esteem (RCSE) is a type of self-esteem that derives from the outcomes, process, and nature of one's romantic relationship. Like other types of contingent self-esteem, it is generally linked with lower levels of self-esteem and well-being. It can be unhealthy for the relationship because it paves the way for excessive bias for negative interpretations of relationship events. Past research has shown that relationship-contingent self-esteem is independent of feelings of commitment to one's relationship, closeness to one's partner, and satisfaction in the relationship. Also, this research showed that it was linked to “obsessive immersion or preoccupation” with the romantic relationship.
Collective self-esteem is a concept originating in the field of psychology that describes the aspect of an individual's self-image that stems from how the individual interacts with others and the groups that the individual is a part of. The idea originated during the research of Jennifer Crocker, during which she was trying to learn about the connection between a person's self-esteem and their attitude towards or about the group that the person is part of.
Interpersonal emotion regulation is the process of changing the emotional experience of one's self or another person through social interaction. It encompasses both intrinsic emotion regulation, in which one attempts to alter their own feelings by recruiting social resources, as well as extrinsic emotion regulation, in which one deliberately attempts to alter the trajectory of other people's feelings.
Frederick Rhodewalt was an American social psychologist at the University of Utah.
Race-based traumatic stress is the traumatic response to stress following a racial encounter. Robert T. Carter's (2007) theory of race-based traumatic stress implies that there are individuals of color who experience racially charged discrimination as traumatic, and often generate responses similar to post-traumatic stress. Race-based traumatic stress combines theories of stress, trauma and race-based discrimination to describe a particular response to negative racial encounters.
Sandra L. Murray is Professor of Psychology at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She is a social psychologist known for her work on close relationships and their trajectories over time. Murray received the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology in 2003 for "distinguished and original contributions to an understanding of motivated social cognition in relationships." Other awards include the New Contribution Award from the International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships in 1998 and 2000, the Outstanding Early Career Award from the International Society for Self and Identity in 2000, the Career Trajectory Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology in 2012, the Mid-Career Distinguished Contribution Award from the International Association for Relationship Research in 2016, and the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities in 2020.
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