 19. Cognitive–Affective Processes in Rejection Sensitivity  421
class-based rejection sensitivity (RS-class). 
Rheinschmidt and Mendoza-  Denton (2014) 
tested the idea that concerns about discrimi -
nation based on one’s social class would be 
damaging to undergraduates’ achievement 
outcomes, particularly among individu -
als who held entity theories  (i.e., the belief 
that their personal characteristics are fixed) 
of intelligence. The reasoning underlying 
this hypothesis was that individuals who 
hold incremental theories  (i.e., perceive the 
capacity for personal growth and change) 
of intelligence, should make the pursuit 
of a college degree and upward mobility 
seem more worthwhile and attainable (see 
Dweck, 2006). Consistent with these ex -
pectations, high levels of both entity beliefs 
and RS-class predicted lower self-  reported 
grades among undergraduates from socio -
economically diverse backgrounds, as well 
as decreased year-end official grades among 
lower-class Latino/a students. Furthermore, 
following failure, entity theorists high in 
class-based RS were less likely to endorse the 
belief that hard work is a key to academic 
success, which suggests that lack of faith in 
upward mobility is one reason that may un -
derlie their academic underachievement.
Finally, it is worth noting that while the 
two previous examples are of ways in which 
personality dynamics interact with other 
CAUs in the system (in the aforementioned 
case, entity beliefs and ethnic identity pro -
cesses), and can also be thought of as intra -
psychic processes (rooted in one’s social- 
cognitive learning history), the CAPS system 
interacts dynamically with environmental 
inputs to lead to different behavioral out -
comes as well. In this regard, Page-Gould, 
Mendoza-  Denton, and Tropp (2008) hy -
pothesized that cross-race friendships should 
have a beneficial effect on students high in 
RS-race, because these friendships can pro -
vide unambiguous cues of acceptance from 
members of the outgroup. To test this idea, 
the researchers adapted Aron and colleagues 
“Fast Friends” procedure for the purpose 
of an intensive experimental intervention 
to test the effects of friendships on outcome 
attitudes, and conducted an intensive ex -
perimental intervention in cross-race versus 
same-race dyads (Aron, Melinat, Aron, Val -
lone, & Bator, 1997). The Fast Friends pro -
cedure involves two participants engaging in a structured back-and-forth task wherein the 
participants take turns asking and answer -
ing questions that increasingly escalate the 
amount of self-  disclosure the answers re -
quire. For example, at the beginning, a ques -
tion may ask about a personal preference for 
food or pets, but later questions would ask 
participants to reflect on deeper goals, fears, 
or aspirations. Following the Fast Friends 
procedures, participants returned to the 
laboratory a week later and participated in 
an additional interactive shared activity (the 
game of Jenga). Findings from this study re -
vealed that among minority students high 
in RS-race, cross-race friendship bolstered 
institutional belonging and satisfaction 
(Mendoza-  Denton & Page-Gould, 2008), 
and attenuated cortisol reactivity during in -
tergroup encounters (Page-Gould, Mendoza- 
Denton, & Tropp, 2008). In further research 
on the effects of cross-race friendship, Page-
Gould, Mendoza-  Denton, Alegre, and Siy 
(2010) found that when someone has a close 
friend of another ethnicity, the closer that 
relationship, the longer it took participants 
(measured through a reaction time task) to 
say that their friend’s ethnicity did not de -
scribe him or her. This suggests greater over -
lap between the self-  concept and the attri -
butes of one’s friend. In subsequent studies, 
it was found that the latency of participants’ 
responses in this task helped explain the de -
gree of comfort experienced by participants 
in a novel intergroup situation (both an 
imagined one and a real-live interaction).
As such, these findings illustrate how 
“personality” research from a CAPS per -
spective fluidly incorporates interpersonal 
and intergroup contexts, challenging tra -
ditional notions of “personality” versus 
“social-  psychological” research. The ap -
proach recognizes that the question around 
behavior is not whether the behavior stems 
from the person or the situation. Instead, 
the CAPS model encourages researchers to 
recognize the constant interplay and inter -
penetration of context into person, as well as 
the influence of the person into the context. 
In this way, the CAPS approach is closer to 
a cultural psychology approach to under -
standing the human psyche (e.g., Shweder, 
1999; Kitayama & Cohen, 2010) than a 
more traditional approach that defines the 
person as separate from the environment.