UC Berkeley

Across two studies, we evaluated whether people with low self-esteem are less likely to capitalize on, or take full advantage of, their romantic partners' accepting behaviors. We conceptualized capitalization as the tendency to perceive acceptance when it occurs, and to experience positive changes in affect and relationship satisfaction when acceptance is perceived. We found that participants with low self-esteem under-perceived their partners' acceptance, both in daily life and in the laboratory. When these behaviors were noticed, participants with low self-esteem experienced smaller, and temporally shorter, boosts in positive affect and relationship satisfaction than participants with high self-esteem. Moreover, the degree to which participants noticed social acceptance in daily life predicted relationship closeness over time. These results generally supported our predictions, and suggest that targeting responses to social acceptance may be an important point of intervention for future studies evaluating ways to improve self-esteem.