The theory of self-affirmation is a psychological theory that was first proposed by Claude Steele (1988) with the premise that people are motivated to maintain the integrity of the self. Importantly, the changes in heart rate and blood pressure reaffirm that the RAT task was stressful for participants. 1999, Sherman & Cohen . J Pers Soc Psychol. [28] More research is needed to better understand how self-affirmation can provide benefit to individuals. Whistling Vivaldi and Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us. To test whether there were differences in the selected #1 ranked value between study conditions, chi-square analyses were conducted to test for condition differences (self-affirmation vs. control, low vs. high chronic stress) on which value participants ranked #1 (Table 3 provides frequencies of #1 ranked values across conditions). Self-affirmation theory posits that the goal of the self is to protect one's self-image when threatened and that one way to do this is through affirmation of valued . Unlike those in a control condition, those in the self-affirmation condition did not show any changes from baseline in their levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Please enable it to take advantage of the complete set of features! Ethnicity (Caucasian vs. all others) and gender (male vs. female) did not moderate any of the primary study results (see Tables 1 and 2). Threats and afrmations arise from the self's fundamental motive: to be morally and adaptively adequate, good and efcacious. Self-image resilience and dissonance: the role of affirmational resources. In L. Berkowitz, (Ed. Consistent with previous studies [28], approximately 50% of participants selected Relations with Friends and Family as their #1 ranked value. PDF The Psychology of Self Defense: Self Affirmation Theory Finally, two limitations of our study should be mentioned. Previous studies indicate that positive affect boosts problem-solving performance [29], [30], so we tested the possibility that the self-affirmation activity was a positive affect induction, and that positive affect engendered by self-affirmation explained the problem-solving effects. Some have suggested that a sense of personal regard emerges early in the life of an infant and remains relatively stable through the lifetime. The research presented has . 445 0 obj <> endobj Findings suggest that self-affirmation buffered against the negative effects of stress on problem-solving performance. Clipboard, Search History, and several other advanced features are temporarily unavailable. Selfaffirmation theory in educational contexts - Easterbrook - 2021 Moreover, as depicted in Figure 1, this stress buffering effect of self-affirmation improved the problem-solving performance of high stress individuals to a level comparable to individuals low in stress. Self-affirmed participants had lost more weight, had lower body mass index, and smaller waist circumference than non-affirmed women. A., Ickes W., Blackstone T. (1995). Our experimental manipulation of self-affirmation was dummy coded (self-affirmation=1, control=0). official website and that any information you provide is encrypted For example, Liston and colleagues found that participants who reported high levels of stress over the previous month demonstrated impaired attention-shifting performance compared to participants who reported low levels of stress [4], [5]. Participants also reported how much chronic stress they endured over the past month. - "The Psychology of Selfdefense: SelfAffirmation Theory" Fig. Cook JE, Purdie-Vaughns V, Garcia J, Cohen GL. The fact that we did not see any differential effects of self-affirmation on a physiological measure of task engagement (heart rate) also suggests that these effects are not driven by changes in persistence or motivation [32]. Self-affirmation reduces biased processing of health-risk information. Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, NCI, Bethesda, Maryland, United States of America, Affiliation: 0000000871 00000 n In her article on the stereotype inoculation model, Nilanjana Dasgupta (this issue) makes a powerful case that numbers shape the psychology of women and minorities in fields related to science, A persistent puzzle emerges from a review of the psychological research literature on how people defend the self from potentially threatening information and events: People can be adamantly, Smith, J. Allegra (B. Several prominent self-theories in social psychology emphasize either the self-as-object or the self-as-subject. Radical acceptance is accepting what is not under our control and embracing what is happening now in a non-judgmental way. Each of us faces numerous threats to our self-worth (insults, criticism, etc.). Thus, the importance of the threatened domain to one's self-integrity is thought to influence the effectiveness of self-affirmations. Research and theorizing inspired by self-affirmation theory has led to theoretical advances in social psychology, with wide-ranging implications for many instances of human functioning and frailty. San Diego: Academic. A., M. A., Psychology) The Tug-of-War Within: Oppositional Affirmation, Parent Versus Professional Identification, and Gender Thesis directed by Professor Bernadette Park The, Self-affirmation theory proposes that individuals possess a flexible self-system, such that they can respond to threats in one domain of life by affirming self-worth in other domains. We provide an overview of self-afrmation theory and review research in three areas where the theory has yielded impactful self-afrmation interventions: education, health, and interpersonal and intergroup relationships. the concept that people are motivated to maintain views of themselves as well adapted, moral, competent, stable, and able to control important outcomes. Do messages about health risks threaten the self? Like other interventions and experiences, self-affirmations can have lasting benefits when they touch off a cycle of adaptive potential, a positive feedback loop between the self-system and the social system that propagates adaptive outcomes over time. Helping Others by First Affirming the Self: When Self-Affirmation Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JDC. Future studies using other measures for assessing chronic stress (e.g., selecting chronically stressed vs. matched control groups) [4] would therefore be useful. New York, NY: Guildford Press. Explore findings indicating diversity in self-esteem in relation to culture, gender, and age. Researchers have found that previously engaging in child-health-promoting. The psychology of self-defense: Self-affirmation theory. Instead of having one self-concept (e.g., I am a good parent), self-affirmation theory posits that individuals flexibly define who they are using various roles (e.g., I am a good parent, child, and worker). Participants provided written informed consent and then completed an experiment ostensibly about intelligence and performance. Enhancing a brief writing intervention to combat stereotype threat among middle-school students. Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom, Affiliation: 21, pp. When you're more accepting and adoring, your partner seems more adorable to you. A great deal of money could be earned and fame accrued. John M. Levine, Affiliation: Indeed, these protective adaptations may lead to rationalizations and even distortions of reality. However, an intervention known as self-affirmation can curb these negative outcomes. I am strong and can overcome challenges that come my way. Psychological vulnerability and stress: the effects of self-affirmation on sympathetic nervous system responses to naturalistic stressors. 0000008767 00000 n Examples of defensive reactions include denial, avoiding the threat, and changing one's appraisal of the event in order to make it less threatening. This study uses self-affirmation theory to draw predictions about the effect of Facebook profile self-presentation on two psychological outcomes: users' state self-esteem and their performance in a cognitive task. Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. %PDF-1.3 % Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333-371, Allport, G. W., Vernon, P. E., & Lindzey, G. E. (1960). Unable to load your collection due to an error, Unable to load your delegates due to an error. The present review addresses this second avenue and the theory that it proceeds from, self-affirmation theory. Examination of how video games can also increase players' willingness to internalize important but threatening self-information suggests that while players who value video game success as part of their identity may reap benefits from video game play after a self-threat, those who do not value such success may experience more harmful effects. New York: Academic Press. Copyright: 2013 Creswell et al. We thus selected 30 challenging RAT items ranging in difficulty from moderately to extremely difficult (the items are available in Table S1). A Defense Motivation Perspective - Social Psychology Analyzed the data: JDC JMD. Before A particularly well-known example of the former is self-affirmation theory (e.g., Steele, 1988) whereas an especially influential example of the latter is ego depletion theory (e.g., Baumeister et al., 1998). A second purpose of this review is to address questions related to the psychology of change raised by self-afrmation . - "The Psychology of Selfdefense: SelfAffirmation Theory" Skip to search form Skip to main content Skip to account menu. Journal of Education Psychology 105:42735, Miyake A, Kost-Smith LE, Finkelstein ND, Pollock SJ, Cohen GL, Ito TA. Self-affirmation theory proposes that individuals possess a flexible self-system, such that they can respond to threats in one domain of life by affirming self-worth in other domains. Steele purported that the self is made up of different domains: roles, values, and belief systems. Simpson J. The ultimate goal of the self is to protect an image of its self-integrity, morality and adequacy. These examples show how we try to maintain our self-esteem when its broken down. Consistent with hypotheses, we observed a significant main effect of chronic stress on RAT performance (=.45, t(72)=2.75, p=.008), such that participants with higher stress in the last month had lower problem-solving performance. Self-affirmation interventions typically have people write about core personal values. Terror management theory (TMT) is compared with other explanations for why people need self-esteem, and a critique of the most prominent of these, sociometer theory, is provided. They then completed 30 difficult remote associate problem-solving items under time pressure in front of an evaluator. In this introduction to the special issue, we review the literature on self-affirmation theory in educational contexts, providing overviews of the heterogeneity in the effectiveness of affirmation interventions, the methods of implementation, potential moderators, and underling processes. Self-integrity is a sense of global efficacy, an . Self-affirmation theory proposes that individuals are driven to protect their self-integrity. . There is thus some fungibility in the sources of self-integrity. Instead, our data indicate that participants across conditions were similarly engaged in the problem-solving task. A., M. A., Psychology) The Tug-of-War Within: Oppositional Affirmation, Parent Versus Professional Identification, and Gender Thesis directed by Professor Bernadette Park The, Self-affirmation theory proposes that individuals possess a flexible self-system, such that they can respond to threats in one domain of life by affirming self-worth in other domains.
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