I Think I Am Doing Great but I Feel Pretty Bad About It: Affective Versus Cognitive Verbs and Self-Reports. (May 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Holtgraves, Thomas
• Is Part Of: Personality & social psychology bulletin. Volume 41:Number 5(2015:May)
• Page Start: 677
• Page End: 686
• Publication Date: 2015-05
• Subjects: question wording -- communication -- gender differences -- social cognition -- self-esteem -- emotion; Personality -- Periodicals; Social psychology -- Periodicals; 302
• DOI: 10.1177/0146167215574269
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0146-1672

Abstract

Four experiments were conducted to examine the effect of responding to self-report items framed with either a cognitive verb (think) or an affective verb (feel). Participants' open-ended self-descriptions were significantly more negative when they responded to a feel prompt than when they responded to a think prompt (Experiments 1 and 2). This effect persisted and influenced scores on a subsequent measure of self-esteem (Experiment 2). Substituting the verb think for feel in the Rosenberg self-esteem scale resulted in significantly higher reported self-esteem for female participants but not for male participants (Experiments 3 and 4). The research contributes to the literature demonstrating the subtle effects of word choice on responses to self-report items.