The directed forgetting of social feedback on individuals with different levels of self-esteem

This study comprises two experiments examining the moderating effect of self-esteem on social feedback-directed forgetting. In Experiment 1, we assessed how negative and positive social feedback influences directed forgetting across high and low self-esteem individuals. We employed a mixed design of 2 (self-esteem: high vs. low) × 2 (feedback: positive vs. negative) × 2 (prompt: remember vs. forget), where self-esteem was an inter-subject variable and feedback and prompts were intra-subject variables. Recall accuracy served as the dependent variable.Participants (N = 1,500) completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and the Beck Depression Inventory online, with extreme grouping applied to establish high and low self-esteem groups from the top and bottom 27% of scores. Participants with Beck scores above 13 were excluded, yielding 72 participants aged 17–25 (36 high self-esteem, 9 males; 36 low self-esteem, 12 males). Results revealed a significant interaction between self-esteem level and social feedback, but no significant three-way interaction, indicating that self-esteem influences recall of social feedback without affecting directed forgetting.Experiment 2 introduced social evaluation and varied social feedback intensity in a 2 (self-esteem: high vs. low) × 2 (prompt: remember vs. forget) × 5 (feedback valence: very negative to very positive) design. This included 70 participants, with 35 in each self-esteem group (8 males high; 11 males low). Findings indicated a significant three-way interaction: high self-esteem individuals showed directed forgetting under high-intensity or neutral feedback but reversed effects under low-intensity feedback. In contrast, low self-esteem individuals did not exhibit directed forgetting. Thus, the moderation effect of self-esteem on directed forgetting is conditional on the intensity of social feedback rather than its valence.