Effects of impaired hearing and favorable vs. unfavorable personal feedback on negative emotional reactions.

Eighty college females listened to one of four taped conversations, which they were led to believe were personality evaluations of themselves. The content of the evaluations varied in feedback, which described either strengths or weaknesses in adjustment, and in form, in that each recording was either completely intelligible or partially unintelligible to simulate normal and impaired hearing, respectively. The emotional reactivity of the subjects was assessed with several psychometric instruments once before and again immediately after they listened to the tapes; the pre/post difference scores reflected the negative emotions elicited by the experimental manipulations.