Self-Structure and Postpartum Dejection in First-Time Mothers
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Transcript of Self-Structure and Postpartum Dejection in First-Time Mothers
The Journal of Psychology, 2005, 139(5), 426-438
Self-Structure and Postpartum Dejectionin First-Time Mothers
WARREN A. REICHRutgers, The State University of New Jersey-Newark
BETH A. SILBERT-MAZZARELLAJENNIFER A. SPENCE
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-New Brunswick
HAROLD I. SIEGELRutgers, The State University of New Jersey-Newark
ABSTRACT. Twenty-nine first-time mothers completed the Beck Depression Inventory
(A. T. Beck, C. H. Ward, M. Mendelson, J. Mock, & J. Erbaugh, 1961) at Time 1 (3rd
trimester) and at Time 2 (3-6 months after delivery). At Time 1, women described each of
20 self-aspects by repeatedly selecting from a list of 36 traits; they also reported the size
of their social support network in a structured interview. At Time 2, the new mothers com-
pleted a short measure of mother role stress and described postpartum difficulties to an
interviewer. The authors used Hierarchical CLASses (HICLAS; P. De Boeck & S. Rosen-
berg, 1988) to idiographically model each woman's self-descriptive data and to identifythe class that contained each woman's most superordinate (cardinal) traits, which were
then coded either as agentic or social-emotional. Postpartum difficulty predicted Time 2
dejection, but mother role stress and social network size did not. However, the content of
the most superordinate trait class moderated the latter two effects. New mothers coded as
agentic were more dejected than were new mothers coded as social-emotional when there
was high mother role stress and when there was a large social support network.
Key words: identity, mothers, postpartum depression, self-structure
CLINICAL POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION is documented to occur in 10% to
15% of mothers, and a related nonclinical dysphoria, postpartum blues, is even
more common (O'Hara & Swain, 1996; Swendsen & Mazure, 2000). In the past,
it was believed that hormonal changes led to experiences of postpartum blues.
However, research to date has found no reliable support for this conjecture
(Cooper & Murray, 1997). Recent research suggests that one of the more reliable
antecedents to postpartum depression and blues is the presence of stressful life
events, particularly those contingent on the transition into the mother role, such
as birth complications or childcare demands (O'Hara, Schlechte, Lewis, &
Wright, 1991; Swendsen & Mazure). Lack of social support has also been shown
to predict postpartum blues, both as a main effect (Areias, Kumar, Barros, &
426
Reich, Silbert-Mazzarella, Spence, & Siegel 427
Figueredo, 1996) and as a moderator of stress (Cutrona, 1984). Having a sup-portive social network provides instrumental, informational, and emotional assis-tance and may also boost a new or expecting mother's self-efficacy in this chal-lenging role (Cutrona & Troutman, 1986).
Self-conception is potentially implicated in the causal paths from motherrole stress and from small social network size to postpartum dejection. Becausethe role identity of a new mother is likely to be a salient one that is functionallyrelated to other aspects of the woman's self, the affective consequences of moth-er role stressors may be magnified relative to the demands of more peripheralrole identities (Thoits, 1991). In addition, a new mother with a small social sup-port network may find the lack of routine interpersonal contact and validation ofself to be stressful. A lack of social support would not only deprive her of valu-able material and social resources but would also make it difficult to maintainstability in her self-structure (Stryker & Serpe, 1982).
In this study, we examined the role of self-structure as a moderator of thehypothesized main effects of mother role stress and social network size. Per-sonality characteristics such as hardiness (Kobasa, 1982) have been shown tomoderate the effect of psychosocial stress and stress-related illness. Evidenceis also emerging for individual differences that moderate the psychologicalbenefits of social support (Brissette, Scheier, & Carver, 2002; Sarason, Pierce,& Sarason, 1990). We evaluated the possibility that the organization of contentin the self-structure renders a new mother more or less susceptible to stressfulevents in the mother role and more or less receptive to social network support.
We assessed self-structure in terms of the set-theoretical model of identityproposed by Rosenberg and his colleagues (Rosenberg, 1997; Rosenberg &Gara, 1985). According to this model, a self-aspect, such as a social role or rela-tionship with a significant other, is experienced as an amalgam of traits. Forexample, a woman may describe her mother self-aspect using the traits tender,loving, and knowledgeable, and her employee self-aspect using the traitsassertive, extraverted, and accomplished. Self-aspects are arranged into a hierar-chy of classes in terms of their shared and nonshared traits. Traits in the self-structure are organized hierarchically into classes according to the self-aspectswith which they are associated. The set-theoretical model distinguishes superor-dinate from subordinate traits. Superordinate traits are more pervasive than sub-ordinate traits in that they are associated with a greater number of self-aspects.Analogous to cardinal traits, these characteristics appear most consistently across
This study was partially finded by a Rutgers Undergraduate Research Fellow award toHarold L Siegel and Warren A. Reich. We wish to thank Alyson Slutzky for her diligentwork in data collection and Eric Parr and Emily Perlberg for coding audiotapes.
Warren A. Reich is now at The Family Center New York, NY and Beth A. Silbert-Maz-zarella is in the Department of Psychology, Montclair State University.
Address correspondence to Warren A. Reich, The Family Center, 66 Reade St., NewYork, NY 10007; [email protected] (e-mail).
428 The Journal of Psychology
situations, roles, and relationships and may function to preserve a sense of sta-bility in the self (Ogilvie & Ashmore, 1991; Ogilvie, Fleming, & Pennell, 1998).
In this study, we were concerned with whether a new mother's most super-ordinate traits reflect an agentic or a social-emotional theme. Generally speak-ing, to be agentic is to assert oneself or attempt to master one's environment,and to be communal is to embed oneself in an interpersonal context of related-
ness (McAdams, 1988). Emmons and McAdams (1991) and Roberts andRobins (2000) demonstrated that the personal strivings of those with
social-emotional traits (e.g., agreeableness) or motives (e.g., intimacy) are
qualitatively different from those with agentic traits (e.g., conscientiousness) or
motives (e.g., achievement).Because the image of the mother role commonly evokes communal or nur-
turing traits (Chodorow, 1978), its enactment would likely be less self-congruent
for new mothers whose superordinate traits are agentic (whom we call agenti-
cally traited) than for new mothers whose superordinate traits are social-emo-
tional (whom we call social-emotionally traited). Agentically traited women in
the new mother role may face a challenge to the integrity of their most consistent
personal qualities that social-emotionally traited new mothers do not.Given the strong motive to present oneself in terms of important self-concepts
(Schlenker, 1985; Swarm, 1990), we proposed that stresses, strains, and hassles in
the mother role should be more psychologically distressing for agentically traitedwomen than for social-emotionally traited women. Consistent with this reason-
ing, we expected agentically traited mothers to show higher postpartum dejection
in response to high mother role stress. We also expected social-emotionally trait-
ed mothers to feel more dejected in response to a small social support network
than would agentically traited mothers, because having few supportive audiences
should be less self-congruent for mothers who see themselves as interdependent-
ly related to a network of helpers and more self-congruent for mothers whose cen-
tral self-concepts emphasize autonomy and independence.Thus, we predicted a positive correlation between mother role stress and
postpartum dejection and a negative correlation between social support network
size and postpartum dejection. In line with the main purpose of this study, we
also expected self-structure to moderate both effects. Specifically, we hypothe-
sized an interaction between the.agentic versus social-emotional content of the
superordinate traits in the self-structure and each main effect: (a) mother role
stress and (b) social network size. Finally, consistent with prior research
(Cutrona, 1984), we tested for an interaction between mother role stress andsocial network size.
Method
Participants
Thirty-three first-time expectant mothers in the third trimester of their preg-
nancy responded to newspaper advertisements or were recruited by word of
Reich, Silbert-Mazzarella, Spence, & Siegel 429
mouth. Motherhood was new to all participants; although 10 women had previ-ously been pregnant, none had actually delivered a child. All but 2 indicated thatthe current pregnancy was planned. Twenty-seven self-identified as White, 3 asAfrican American, 1 as Asian American, and 1 as Latina (one respondent'sanswer to this item was uncodable). Twenty-seven had completed at least somecollege, and 28 were married. Twenty-nine of the 33 original participants com-pleted the study (M age = 32.41, SD = 4.66; Mdn household income = $80,000).
Procedure
After an initial phone screening during which the purpose of the study wasdescribed, the participants met individually with a female interviewer, either atthe Rutgers University Attachment Laboratory in Newark, NJ, or at the partici-pant's home. They signed an informed consent and agreed to participate for $15for the first session during their third trimester (Time 1), and $25 for the secondsession, which took place 3 to 6 months after delivery (Time 2). At Time 1, thewomen completed a self-description task and reported the size of their social sup-port network in a structured interview. At Time 2, they completed a short mea-sure of mother role stress and described postpartum difficulties to an interview-er. The participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI; Beck et al.,1961) at both times. After the second session, they were debriefed.
Self-description task. Women described each of 20 self-aspects by repeatedlyselecting from a set of 36 traits in a checklist. Self-aspects included roles andidentities such as me as an expecting mother and me with my best female friend,prototypical selves such as myself in the fioure and "real me," and one generalimage: the typical American mother of today. The trait checklist contained threecategories of trait terms: agentic (e.g., powerfid, accomplished), social-emotion-al (e.g., nurturing, loving), and negative (e.g., stupid, argumentative). There wasno limit on the number of traits that could be selected to describe a given self-aspect, or how often a particular trait could be used.
Structural analysis of self-descriptive data. Each woman's self-descriptive datawas converted to a binary matrix, each row corresponding to a self-aspect andeach column representing a trait (1 = trait i associated with self-aspect j, 0 oth-erwise). Each woman's binary matrix was individually analyzed using HICLAS,a hierarchical classification program for binary data (De Boeck & Rosenberg,1988; Rosenberg, 1997). HICLAS places self-aspects (rows) into classes basedon their shared and nonshared traits (columns) and simultaneously places traitsinto classes in terms of their co-occurrence across self-aspects. Self-aspects andtraits that do not fit well into the structure are placed into an undefined residualclass not connected to the rest of the structure. HICLAS creates a hierarchy ofclasses both for traits and for self-aspects. We used the trait structure to identifythe most superordinate trait class in each woman's output. The most superordi-
430 The Journal of Psychology
nate trait class is the one that, like a cardinal trait, is linked to the greatest num-ber of self-aspect classes.
We used Rank3 HICLAS solutions, which produce three base classes of self-
aspects and three base classes of traits (see Figure 1). In this study, we did notcode the part of the HICLAS outputs representing the structure of self-aspects.HICLAS computes a goodness-of-fit coefficient indicating the extent to which the
raw data (i.e., the Binary Self-Aspects x Traits matrix) are accurately representedin the model. Higher ranks produce higher goodness-of-fit coefficients but are less
parsimonious (De Boeck & Rosenberg, 1988). The mean goodness-of-fit for our
Rank 3 solutions was .715. That is, over 70% of the average woman's trait attri-
butions-is in her checklist data set-were accurately modeled.Figure 1 shows a HICLAS output for one participant. The structure of self-
aspects is shown on the top half of the figure, and the structure of traits is shown in
the bottom half. The bold vertical lines illustrate the link between the two structures
in the HICLAS output. This woman's most superordinate trait class contains joy,
loyal, caring, nurturing, and warm; it is this class of traits that is associated with the
largest number (six) of self-aspect classes (compare the trait class containingachievement, controlling, and in control, which is linked only to four self-aspect
classes). We dummy-coded each woman's HICLAS output according to the contentof the most superordinate trait class (SUPTRAIT): 1 if her most superordinate trait
class contained at least a two-thirds majority of agentic terms, or 2 if it contained at
least a two thirds majority of social-emotional terms. The woman depicted in Fig-
ure 1 was assigned a code of 2. Another woman whose most superordinate trait class
contained achievement, focused, knowledgeable, accomplished, and determined
was assigned a code of 1. Nine women were identified as agentically traited and 20
as social-emotionally traited.
Social support network size. Social support network size (NUMHELP) was
indexed as the number of people named in response to the interviewer's question,"How many people can you count on for help with childcare?" Similar indices
have been used in studies of postpartum depression (Areias et al., 1996) and
identity commitment (Reich, 1997; Stryker & Serpe, 1982). The mean socialsupport network size was 2.81 (SD = 1.39).
Mother role stress. At Time 2, participants completed a 4-item measure of moth-
er role stress (MOMSTRES): "The major source of stress in my life is my child,'
"Having a child leaves little time and flexibility in my life," "It is difficult to bal-
ance different responsibilities because of my child" and "I feel overwhelmed by
the responsibility of being a'parent" on a Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strong-
ly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). This scale was adequately reliable, a = .74.
Postpartum difficulty. At Time 2, we audiotaped new mothers' responses to an
open-ended question posed by an interviewer concerning her experiences since
Reich, Silbert-Mazzarella, Spence, & Siegel 431
3 Residual Self-Aspects
2 Self Aspects- Typical Ameri-can Mom)
3 Self Aspectse.g., Me With Father
of Baby)
Argumentative
LoveFocused
15 Residual Traits
FIGURE 1. HICLAS output for I participant.
delivering her child: "What problems have you experienced since the birth ofyour baby?" Two undergraduate raters (trained using audiotapes from pilot inter-views) listened to each mother's narrative account and assigned a rating from 1(little difficulty) to 3 (great deal of difficulty). Though raters' scores never dif-
432 The Journal of Psychology
fered by more than one point, reliability was not high, r(29) = .43. Inter-rater dis-
agreements were resolved by having a third trained undergraduate judge the
audiotapes, unaware of the previous ratings.
Dejection. Participants completed the 21-item BDI (Beck et al., 1961) at Time 1
(DEP1) and Time 2 (DEP2).
Results
Descriptive Analyses
Zero-order correlations among the predictor variables and depression are
shown in Table 1. Age was correlated with depression at both times and was
therefore used as a control variable in multiple regression analyses. Dejection
decreased from Time 1 to Time 2, M = 9.62 versus 7.20, paired t(28) = 3.66, p <
.001. Sixteen women at Time 1 (55.17%) and 9 women at Time 2 (31.03%)
scored above the cut-off point on the BDI (Beck et al., 1961) for mild depression
(Groth-Marnat, 1990). No woman in our sample was moderately or severely
depressed according to the BDI.We used HICLAS nomothetically for one target, the typical American moth-
er of today. For this analysis, the binary matrix consisted of 29 rows, each con-
taining one woman's description of this target, and 36 columns, each represent-
ing a trait (as in the earlier idiographic analyses). Agentic, social-emotional, and
negative trait terms were all present in the HICLAS structure. However, the most
superordinate trait class in this structural output (i.e., the class of traits most com-
TABLE 1. Zero-Order Correlations Among Major Variables in This Study(N = 29)
Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Age2. SUPTRAIT -. 143. MOMSTRES -. 20 -. 034. PPDIFF .24 -. 12 .38*5. NUMHELP -. 08 -. 23 -. 18 -. 306. DEPI -. 52** .19 .14 .00 -. 297. DEP2 -. 41* -. 00 .20 .30 -. 15 .47**
Note. SUPTRAIT = content of most superordinate trait class (1 = agentic, 2 = social-emo-tional); MOMSTRES = mother role stress; NUMHELP = social support network size;PPDIFF = postpartum difficulty; DEPI = Beck Depression Inventory score at Time I; DEP2= Beck Depression Inventory score at Time 2.*p <. 05. **p <.0 1.
Reich, Silbert-Mazzarella, Spence, & Siegel 433
monly endorsed as descriptive of the typical American mother) contained love,joy, caring, knowledgeable, tender, and nurturing, all but one of which we cate-gorized as social-emotional. Consistent with Chodorow's (1978) reasoning, theprototypical mother role most frequently evoked images of social-emotionaltraits, in fact, for nearly all of the women in our sample.
Hypothesis Tests
Table 2 shows that MOMSTRES was not predictive of DEP2 as a maineffect after controlling for age and DEP1. As hypothesized, however, we found asignificant interaction between MOMSTRES and SUPTRAIT. This interactionremained significant after controlling for whether a negative trait class waslinked to me as an expecting mother and whether a negative trait class was linkedto the "real me" (semipartial rs = -. 33 in both cases, ps < .05). A procedure rec-ommended by Aiken and West (1991) for plotting regression interactionsrevealed that for agentically traited women, a significant positive relationshipwas obtained between MOMSTRES and DEP2, 13 =.71, p < .05. For social-emo-tionally traited women, however, no relationship was observed between thesevariables, B = -. 08, p > .60.
In a follow-up analysis, we counted the number of agentic and social-emo-tional traits in each woman's HICLAS structure (recall that poorly fitting traitsare discarded into a residual class that is not included in the structure). Neitherthe coefficient for MOMSTRES x Number of Agentic Traits nor the coefficientfor MOMSTRES x Number of Social-Emotional Traits was significant (semi-partial rs = -. 04 and -. 16, respectively, ps > .38). Thus, it seems that the criticalmoderating variable was not the mere number of agentic or social-emotionaltraits but their structural location in the most superordinate class (i.e., the classof cardinal traits).
Table 2 also shows that our second measure of stress, PPDIFF, was predic-tive of DEP2, controlling for age and DEPI (the bivariate correlation betweenPPDIFF and DEP2 was positive but not significant). Adjusting for the controlvariables, women who reported more difficulty after delivering their child weremore dejected than those who reported less difficulty. We found no evidence foran interaction with SUPTRAIT, however.
We did not find that NUMHELP was predictive of DEP2 as a main effect(see Table 2). A significant interaction was obtained, however, betweenNUMHELP and SUPTRAIT, as hypothesized. As was the case in the previousanalysis, this interaction remained significant after controlling for whether a neg-ative trait class was linked to me as an expecting mother, and whether a negativetrait class was linked to the "real me" (interaction semipartial rs = -. 36 and -. 38,respectively, ps < .05). For social-emotionally traited women, the obtained mar-ginally significant negative slope (B = -. 38, p < .07) reflects the typical effect ofsocial support networks (larger networks associated with lower depression). For
434 The Journal of Psychology
TABLE 2. Hierarchical Regressions to Predict Time 2 Dejection FromMother Role Stress, Content of Most Superordinate Traits, Postpartum Dif-
ficulty, and Social Support Network Size
Cumulative ChangeVariable R in R 2 sr2 sr
Mother role stress
Step 1: .27*Age .03 -. 17
DEP1 .09 .30
MOMSTRES .01 .11
Step 2: .28 .01SUPTRAIT .01 -. 10
Step 3: .39* .11*MOMSTRES x SUPTRAIT .11* -. 33*
Postpartum difficulty
Step 1: .39*Age .08 -. 28
DEP1 .06 .25
PPDIFF .13* .36*
Step 2: .39* .00SUPTRAIT .00 -. 06
Step 3:PPDIFF x SUPTRAIT .01 .11
Social support
Step 1: .26*Age .04 -. 20
DEP1 .07 .26
NUMHELP .00 -. 07
Step 2: .28 .01SUPTRAIT .01 -. 12
Step 3: .44** .16"*NLTMHELP x SUPTRAIT .16** -. 40**
Note. DEP1 = Beck Depression Inventory score at Time 1; MOMSTRES = mother rolestress; SUPTRAIT= content of most superordinate trait class (1 = agentic, 2 = social-emo-
tional); PPDIFF = postpartum difficulty; NUMHELP = social support network size.*p <.05. **p <.Ol.
agentically traited women, however, the slope was positive, though not signifi-
cant (B = .50, p > .10).In a follow-up analysis similar to the one reported here, we found no evi-
Reich, Silbert-Mazzarella, Spence, & Siegel 435
dence for an interaction between NUMHELP and either the number of nonresid-ual agentic traits or the number of nonresidual social-emotional traits (semipar-tial rs = -. 04 and .22, respectively, ps > .22). Again, it seems that the moderatingeffect was due to the structural location and not to the number of agentic versussocial-emotional traits.
We found no evidence for an interaction between MOMSTRES andNUMHELP, semipartial r =.29, p> .10. Nor did we find a significant PPDIFF xNUMHELP interaction, semipartial r=.10, p> .50. Thus, our third hypothesizedinteraction was not supported.
Discussion
We first used HICLAS to identify the pattern of traits associated with theimage of the typical mother and found that the most commonly endorsed attri-butes for this image were social-emotional. The two significant interactions wefound in our main analyses indicated that (a) agentically traited women showeda stronger association between mother role stress and postpartum dejection thandid social-emotionally traited women, and (b) agentically traited women report-ed higher postpartum dejection with larger social support networks than didsocial-emotionally traited women. Although we did find that postpartum diffi-culty was associated with higher Time 2 dejection, we did not find main effectsfor mother role stress or for social network size. Nor did our results demonstratean interaction between these two variables.
Our findings are generally consistent with Swann's (1990) self-verificationtheory, which states that people desire and attempt to construct social environ-ments that provide feedback consistent with their central self-concepts (see alsoSchlenker, 1985). Stressors relevant to the mother role are likely to haveincreased the salience and personal relevance of self-as-mother (Ruble & Seid-man, 1996). Conceivably, the mother role stress experienced by agentically trait-ed women threatened central self-images, such as powerful and in control,through negative feedback for important role performances. The self-verificationformulation suggests that obstacles to the efficient performance of the new moth-er role prevented these women from experiencing and presenting themselves inagentic ways, as they normally would in most situations.
Mother role stress experienced by social-emotionally traited women mayhave been seen as consistent, or at least not inconsistent, with their cardinal traits(as our nomothetic HICLAS analysis of the typical American mother suggests)and thus may not have posed a challenge or threat to central self-concepts. Role-related stressors may have psychologically magnified the congruence betweenself and role for social-emotionally traited women and self-role incongruencefor agentically traited women, which ultimately led to feelings of dejection.
Similarly, whereas agentically traited women may have experienced a largesocial support network as antithetical to their independent, autonomous self-con-
436 The Journal of Psychology
cepts, social-emotionally traited women may have felt their more communal
self-concepts threatened when their social support networks were small. Think-
ing of oneself as powerful, for example, becomes less functional when sur-
rounded by helpers; conversely, one's self-concept as trusting becomes difficult
to enact in the absence of receptive audiences. Having a large number of audi-
ences has been associated with higher role commitment (Reich, 1997; Reich,
Ramos, & Jaipal, 2000; Stryker & Serpe, 1982). The heightened salience of the
mother role brought on by a large social support network may have primed and
amplified self-role congruence for social-emotionally traited women, and
self-role incongruence for agentically traited women.According to self-verification theory, a person whose self-concept has been
challenged or invalidated will feel distressed and will engage in crisis self-verifica-
tion (Swann, 1987) by actively attempting to restore congruity between the self and
social experience. Self-verification theory does not, however, explicitly account for
why women whose cardinal traits were not congruent with the size of their support
networks were more dejected after delivering their child than women whose traits
were congruent with the new mother role. We conjecture that a sense of loss, and
possibly a desire to psychologically withdraw from the role, followed repeated
failed attempts to self-verify (Alexander & Higgins, 1993; Schlenker, 1985). A
social-emotionally traited woman may not have been able to find new friends or
acquaintances to help with child care; an agentically traited woman may not have
been able to tackle problems with a temperamental child (or husband) in the same
way she typically handled difficulties on the job. The relationship between self-
verification and postpartum dejection would be clarified in future work using
indices of self-verification, such as having mothers rate the importance or self-
relevance of trait terms in a separate task from describing their role identities.
Our results were in line with the main effect of mother role stress on post-
partum dejection found by several researchers (reviewed in Swendsen & Mazure,
2000). We did not, however, find evidence for an interaction between role stress
and social network size, as others have (e.g., Cutrona, 1984). Future research
would benefit from a more highly differentiated conceptual definition and oper-
ationalization of mother role stress and of social support. Measures of mother
role stress may include specific indicators of problems in delivery, reduced self-
efficacy, marital discord, or infant temperament (Swendsen & Mazure).
Measures of actual (vs. perceived) support, support from the father of the
child (as opposed to a global index of support), and quality of or satisfaction with
support (O'Hara & Swain, 1996; Sarason, Sarason, & Pierce, 1990) may yield
results-main effects and interactions-obscured by the simple index of social
network size that we used in this study. Longitudinal assessments of both the
quantity and quality of support would be particularly valuable.
On a final methodological note, our data analysis using HICLAS provided a
theoretically interesting person-centered moderator variable. Prediction of post-
partum dejection was not improved by a count of the agentic or social-emotion-
Reich, Silbert-Mazzarella, Spence, & Siegel 437
al traits endorsed by our participants, but rather the placement of agentic orsocial-emotional traits in the most superordinate class. We would not have beenable to identify discrete sets of cardinal traits had we not used HICLAS to struc-turally model individuals' self-descriptive data. This analytic strategy offers anidiographic advantage in the assessment of the self (Pelham, 1993; Reich, Tuske-nis, Slutzky, & Siegel, 2000), allowing researchers to explicitly represent pat-terns of self-beliefs that, in interaction with the social environment, have impor-tant affective consequences.
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Original manuscript received April 1, 2004
Final revision accepted November 3, 2004
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