Abstract
Conditional regard refers to regard dependent upon the receiver's fulfillment of certain expectations. Using an experimental design, we examined the effect of conditional negative and positive regard on well-being and eagerness to learn in university freshmen (N = 131). Participants experienced either failure or success followed by conditional vs. unconditional regard. As expected, success and failure had opposite effects on well-being and eagerness to learn. More importantly, there was an increase in positive affect following success in the context of conditional regard, but not in the context of unconditional regard. Additionally, the decrease in positive affect following failure was more pronounced when accompanied by conditional as compared to unconditional regard. Conditional regard thus magnified the impact of success versus failure on students' emotional experiences.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 105-114 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Psychologica Belgica |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Funding
This research was supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship granted by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) to the first author from 2014 to 2017 and by the KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access. The authors would like to thank Annabel Bogaerts and Evi Imler for their assistance in this research as part of their master’s thesis in psychology.
Keywords
- Affect
- Conditional regard
- Eagerness to learn
- Experiment
- Self-esteem