Implicit self-esteem compensation: automatic threat defense.

Four experiments demonstrated implicit self-esteem compensation (ISEC) in response to threats involving gender identity (Experiment 1), implicit racism (Experiment 2), and social rejection (Experiments 3-4). Under conditions in which people might be expected to suffer a blow to self-worth, they instead showed high scores on 2 implicit self-esteem measures. There was no comparable effect on explicit self-esteem.

Redescription disembeds relations: evidence from relational transfer and use in problem solving.

How relational information becomes disembedded from its original context is an important issue for theories of cognition. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that a process called redescription disembeds relations, resulting in abstract and, therefore, more transferable and robust representations. In Experiment 1, participants solved simple problems involving an alternating sequence.