Increasing and decreasing implicit self-esteem using subliminal stimuli presentation and classical conditioning in college students

The purpose of this study was to accompany a number of positive and negative stimuli with students' self, by subliminal method in order to investigate the effectiveness of these stimuli on implicit self-esteem.

The research method was empirical study with experimental pretest-posttest design and control group. The statistical population included 956 undergraduate students at Farhangian University of Kurdistan in the academic year 2018-2019 with the quantity of 956 people. Among them, using systematic random sampling, 90 subjects (45 males and 45 females) from the list of university students who had criteria for entering the study, were randomly selected and assigned to two groups of positive and negative manipulation and one control group. After measuring the implicit self-esteem by using the Name Initial Preferences Task as pretest, a computerized software of implicit self-esteem manipulation, was developed to manipulate the positive and negative implicit self-esteem. After performing the intervention on the experimental groups, implicit self-esteem of subjects was measured as posttest.

The findings of covariance analysis by controlling the effect of pretest showed that, positive manipulation caused a significant increase (P=0/001) in implicit self-esteem and negative manipulation caused a significant decrease (P=0/001) in implicit self-esteem.

Findings of the research showed that although self-esteem feelings can be derived from childhood experiences, thereafter can increase or decrease with use of the basic learning principles of classical conditioning.