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Social threats during relationship initiation often cause people to engage in cold behaviors that bring about rejection. However, interpersonal risk-regulation theory suggests that such processes will be moderated by global self-esteem. In two experiments that manipulated the threat of rejection, single participants communicated via video camera with an opposite-sex interaction partner (actually a confederate). As expected, social threat caused higher self-esteem individuals (HSEs) to exhibit a warming-up behavioral response but caused lower self-esteem individuals (LSEs) to exhibit a cooling-down behavioral response, according to both observer-reports and self-reports, which in turn led observers to like HSEs more than LSEs. Furthermore, these effects were independent of similar, previously documented, interpersonal risk-regulation effects on participants' perceptions of acceptance from the confederate.