The defeated self: Evidence that entrapment moderates first name priming effects on failure-thought accessibility

Abstract

Self-focus has been shown to induce negative thoughts and affects. We hypothesized that individual differences in sense of entrapment moderate the effects of self-focus on failure- and escape-thought accessibility. Participants (N = 150) were briefly primed with their first names or a random string of letters (33 ms), before completing a lexical decision task with words related to success, failure and escape, as well as neutral words. Compared to the control condition, first name priming facilitated identification of failure-related words, and this effect was moderated by self-reported feelings of entrapment. A similar, although marginal, facilitation of name priming was also observed for escape-related words. Sense of entrapment appears to be a vulnerability factor to the negative effects of self-focus.