Social evaluative threat across individual, relational, and collective selves

Social psychologists have long been interested in studying the effects of threat on physiology, affect, cognition, and behavior. However, researchers have traditionally examined threat at the level of individuals, relationships, or groups, rather than studying commonalities that exist across these levels. In this chapter, we propose that social evaluative threat – the real, imagined, or potential experience of being negatively evaluated – can occur at the level of the individual self, as a relational partner, or as a group member. Individual, relational, and collective selves are not always distinct entities, but are flexible and can overlap with one another. Across these levels, individuals differ in the degree to which they perceive and respond to social evaluative threat, depending on their psychological distance from the threat and expectations and motivation to detect threat. When people perceive a threat to any of these levels, they respond by engaging in behaviors reflecting approach or avoidance motivation. Overall, our model encourages researchers to assess key moderators of threat, examine threats at different levels of the self, and consider how experiences of threat at one level may impact other levels. By highlighting the flexibility of the self, researchers can test interventions that change threat cues in the environment, attenuate perceptions of threat, or help people cope with threat.