Abstract: This study combined questionnaires with an experiment to investigate the buffering effect of self-esteem on the depressive and anxious reactions to induced failure using 117 undergraduates in Grade Two as subjects. The results showed: (1) Whenever the negative emotional reactions were measured, the depressive or anxious reaction of the group with high self-esteem was obviously less than that of the group with low self-esteem; (2) The failure-procedure successfully induced the negative emotional reactions to failure; (3) After failure, self-esteem didn’t buffer the negative reactions to it immediately; (4) After strategy-operation, self-esteem buffered the negative emotional reactions significantly and this buffering effect was different under different condition; but there was no overall significant interaction between self-esteem and strategy-operation in this effect.

Key words: self-esteem, strategy-operation, depressive reaction, anxious reaction, the buffering effect