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This article focuses on the communication of compensatory self-presentations (CSP) (i.e., self presentations that people engage in after publicly receiving unfavorable feedback), with prior work showing that people prudently constrain CSP to areas unrelated (vs. related) to the initial feedback. With the current project we examine the influence that upward comparisons (i.e., a better-performing other is privy to the unfavorable feedback) have on the communication of CSP. Results across three experiments provide the first evidence that upward comparisons increase CSP. However, importantly, people did not cautiously restrain the communication of CSP to unrelated areas; rather, CSP was broadened to equally included areas both related and unrelated to the initial comparative topic. This differs sharply from and significantly extends prior CSP work.

It was hypothesized that monitoring the social environment for relational value (RV) cues both consumes and depletes self-regulatory resources. Consistent with predictions, the results suggest that regulatory resources are depleted when people monitor for relational cues (Experiments 1 and 2), that the capacity to monitor for complex (vs. simple) forms of relational cues is negatively impacted by prior depletion of the self’s resources (Experiment 3), and that insofar as the self’s resources are depleted by recent acts of self-regulation, people are less effective at monitoring for relational cues (Experiment 4). These findings suggest an integrative relationship between regulatory resources and people’s capacity to accurately monitor the social environment for cues that communicate their RV.