The dark side of ambiguous discrimination: how state self-esteem moderates emotional and behavioural responses to ambiguous and unambiguous discrimination.

Two experiments examine how experimentally induced differences in state self-esteem moderate emotional and behavioural responses to ambiguous and unambiguous discrimination. Study 1 (N=108) showed that participants who were exposed to ambiguous discrimination report more negative self-directed emotions when they have low compared to high self-esteem. These differences did not emerge when participants were exposed to unambiguous discrimination.