Self-Approach Tendencies: Relations With Explicit and Implicit Self-Evaluations

Abstract

We used a newly developed Self-Approach-Avoidance Task (Self-AAT) to measure self-approach tendencies in female students. In this task, participants use a joystick to pull portraits of themselves and of others closer or to push them away. In the three studies, we found a significant self-approach tendency: participants were faster to pull mirror-imaged portraits of themselves closer than to push them away. This approach tendency was reduced for non-mirrored self-portraits, and absent for control pictures showing unknown males, unknown females, or empty backgrounds. Moreover, in two out of the three studies, the self-approach tendency was weakly related to explicit self-valuations measured with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES), and in one out of two studies, it was related to implicit self-evaluations measured with the Implicit Association Task (IAT). Implications and potential applications of the findings are discussed.

Test-retest reliability of a smartphone-based approach-avoidance task: Effects of retest period, stimulus type, and demographics

“…Other behavioral tasks-such as the stop-signal task and the go/no-go-task-have already been shown to be unreliable: After examining 374 measures from various tasks (total N = 17,550), Enkavi et al (2019) concluded that "most individual dependent measures from [implicit] tasks are not appropriate for individual difference analyses based on their low [test-retest] reliability." Consequently, several authors have suggested that replication failures in AAT research could also be explained by the task's (assumed) low reliability (Aupperle et al, 2011;Becker et al, 2019;Field et al, 2016;Gawronski et al, 2011;Kakoschke et al, 2015;Loijen et al, 2020;Meule, Richard, et al, 2019b;Reddy et al, 2016;Reinecke et al, 2012;Struijs et al, 2017Struijs et al, , 2018Swinkels et al, 2019;Voncken et al, 2012;Vrijsen et al, 2018;Wiers et al, 2013;Zech et al, 2020).…”

Alcohol Approach Bias Is Associated With Both Behavioral and Neural Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer Effects in Alcohol-Dependent Patients

“…For the aAAT, 6 patients were excluded because of excessive errors (>35%) ( 30 , 31 ). To exclude extreme outlier response times, the 1% fastest and 1% slowest responses were excluded in the overall response time distribution, consistent with the method used in previous studies ( 33 , 45 , 46 , 47 ). Trials with incorrect responses on the first try were also discarded.…”