598 vI. SELF‑ AND S OCIAL P ROCESSES
Negotiation  Outcomes
By negotiating situated identities and ap -
praisals, targets and perceivers achieve a 
“working consensus” (Goffman, 1959). At 
this point, the stage is set for them to work 
toward the goals that initially brought them 
into the interaction, such as collaborating on 
a work project, forging a romantic relation -
ship, cohabitating peacefully, or negotiating 
assets. To the extent that targets’ situated 
identities are consistent with their initial 
relationship goals and with perceivers’ situ -
ated appraisal of them, they should be well 
positioned to achieve the outcomes they de -
sire. These outcomes include relationship 
quality, psychological well-being, and work 
productivity.
Relationship  Quality
As we noted earlier, targets’ satisfaction 
with their long-term relationships increases 
to the extent that perceivers view them in 
an identity-  confirming manner (i.e., their 
situated identity corresponds closely to both 
their initial identity and their partner’s situ -
ated appraisal of them). For example, when 
married people’s spouses see them as they 
see themselves, they are more intimate and 
satisfied with their spouses and are less 
likely to get divorced (Swann et al., 1994). 
Similarly, unmarried couples in long-term 
relationships feel more close and intimate 
with partners who view them congruently 
(L. Campbell et al., 2006). Presumably, 
congruent appraisals foster predictabil -
ity and manageability in the relationship, 
which may not only increase the likelihood 
of achieving relationship goals (e.g., rais -
ing children), but also offer psychological 
comfort. Such psychological comfort may, 
in turn, reduce anxiety. From this vantage 
point, self-  verification has an emotion regu -
latory function that the identity negotiation 
process facilitates.
Well‑Being
There is some indication that a lack of cor -
respondence between targets’ situated iden -
tities and perceivers’ situated appraisals 
increases negative emotions and promotes 
maladaptive psychological and physiologi -cal outcomes. For example, Burke (2004) 
reported that identity-  disconfirming events 
in the context of marital relationships in -
creased people’s distress for up to 2 days fol -
lowing the events. Similarly, Wood and col -
leagues (2005) found that participants with 
low self-  esteem felt anxious and concerned 
when confronted with success, apparently 
because success feedback was inconsistent 
with their identity. More recently, Howarth 
and Forbes (2015) found that socially anx -
ious people reacted to positive feedback with 
heightened fears of evaluation, and to nega -
tive feedback with increased feelings of com -
fort. Finally, Ayduk et al. (2013) observed 
people’s cardiovascular responses to evalua -
tions that either confirmed or disconfirmed 
their self-views. When people received posi -
tive feedback, those with negative self-views 
became physiologically “threatened” (dis -
tressed and avoidant). In contrast, when 
they received negative feedback, people with 
negative self-views became physiologically 
“challenged” or galvanized (i.e., aroused, 
but in a manner associated with approach 
motivation). People with positive self-views 
displayed the opposite pattern.
If positive but nonverifying experiences 
are stressful for people with negative self-
views, then over an extended period such 
experiences might prove to be physically de -
bilitating. Sure enough, several independent 
investigations support this proposition. An 
initial pair of prospective studies (Brown 
& McGill, 1989) examined the impact of 
positive life events on the health outcomes 
of people with low and high self-  esteem. For 
high-self-  esteem participants, positive life 
events (e.g., improvement in living condi -
tions, getting very good grades) predicted 
increases in health; among people low in 
self- esteem, positive life events predicted 
decreases  in health. This finding was repli -
cated and extended by Shimizu and Pelham 
(2004). These researchers discovered that 
positive life events predicted increased illness 
among people low in self-  esteem, even when 
controlling for negative affectivity, thereby 
undercutting the rival hypothesis that nega -
tive affect influenced both self-  esteem and 
symptom reports. Apparently, for people 
with negative self-views, the disjunction be -
tween positive life events and their chroni -
cally negative identity may be so psychologi -