Self-affirmation Theory

Abstract

Claude M. Steele, in his groundbreaking study The Psychology of Self-Affirmation (1988) argued that self-affirmation processes are triggered by situations that threaten the perceived adequacy or integrity of the self. When the self or ego is threatened, people engage in strategies, such as engaging in explanation, rationalizations, justifications, self-affirmations, and avoidance. The purpose of these actions is to maintain self-conceptions of the self as morally adequate, that is, as competent, good, coherent, stable, capable of free choice, capable of controlling important outcomes and so on. The latter is known as self-integrity. The ways people cope with maintaining self-integrity may be adaptive, maladaptive, unconscious, or learned.

Overview

Self-affirmation was a term coined by Claude M. Steele in his seminal work The Psychology of Self-Affirmation. Self-affirmation consists of a series of internal processes and sometimes, expressed behaviors, that are activated by perceived threats to a person's sense of integrity, adequacy, and self-esteem. Self-affirmation processes serve the function of restoring self-regard through rationalization, explanations, and actions; in other words, individuals need to believe they are competent, stable, moral, and capable of free will and of controlling the important outcomes of their lives. Their self-integrity—that is, according to Steele, people's idea of themselves as good and moral people—needs to form a coherent whole with their surroundings. Tied to their notion of self-integrity, is an individual's self-regard or self-respect. That is why, when faced with threats to their self-regard and self-integrity, people develop a series of cognitive strategies to deal with these. In fact, according to Steele, it is more common for people to deal with the threat to their self-perception rather than the threat itself.

Self-affirmation theory is the field that studies all pertaining to these threats to the self and how people—or groups of people—deal with them. A great deal of research has been done on the topic and on related psychological phenomena, including prejudice and stereotyping, cognitive dissonance, causal attributions, intolerance of uncertainty, cognitive bias, biased information processes, rumination and stress, and many other phenomena that deal with subjective inferences drawn by individuals about other people and situations. These studies are important because they seek to understand and explain how people cope with situations in which they face a perceived threat to their self-image. The phenomena are not limited to individuals, for these may include group identities, such as a racial or ethnic group or a sports team.

People in their everyday lives inevitably face threats to the self; often these are self-provoked, as in the case of failures and errors. These may include subpar performance at school, the workplace, or in sports. Other instances threaten the belief that people are in control of their lives and outcomes, such as thwarted dreams, expectations or aspirations, evidence that contradicts the appropriateness of one's behavior, negative feedback or information that challenges valued beliefs, romantic rejection, being laid off from a job, and many others. The chances for feeling inadequate abound in any given day, making it hard for people to maintain their self-integrity on an even keel in the face of daily setbacks.

According to experts, people have developed a set of cognitive strategies that create protective and defensive adaptations when impending danger appears. In the sphere of psychological phenomena, these may run the gamut from rationalizations to distortions, aimed at decreasing the threat to self-esteem or self-regard. These strategies shield people from the belief that the threat may indicate a hurtful truth, such as that their performance is inadequate, or their behavior is misguided. As an example, it is pertinent to mention the vast numbers of people who downplay scientific information correlating risky behaviors they engage in with the risk for specific diseases. Many people who smoke, for instance, will dismiss the information of its correlation to some types of cancer, and rationalize their behavior rather than accept it is misguided. Psychologists explain that people consistently view themselves as a causal or potent actor in their lives, responsible for their positive outcomes—although not so much for negative outcomes.

In fact, according to a psychological tendency known as self-serving bias, people tend to attribute positive outcomes to their own actions, but negative outcomes to external factors. Moreover, as much research shows, individuals tend to be overly optimistic in their expectations of success and self-perceptions related to their accomplishments and competence. People can also be self-critical and sensible; it is more an issue of optimism going into high gear in certain situations in which the ego or self-regard calls for it. Studies, then, strive to determine the contexts in which people are more open-minded and those in which they become defensive in the face of threats to self-integrity and self-regard.

Defensive responses tend to occur when an individual feels the need to diminish threats to self-integrity, their self-concept as a person who acts according to social values, norms, and expectations. In general, these strategies have been adapted to protect self-integrity; however, according to experts, they can also become maladaptive—that is, a counterproductive adaptation. Rather than allowing people to learn from adversity, they become extremely defensive and may distort their perception of an event and even reinforce inadequate responses.

One of the most common and interesting of these defensive strategies is known as self-affirmation. As Steele proposed, when self-esteem and self-integrity are threatened, people respond to protect these by reducing the threat. One of the ways it does this without recurring to defensive biases, is by self-affirmations, which work both at the individual and at the collective levels. Integrity is described as the belief that one is in general a good and moral person, who fits the values and standards of his or her culture, and capable of controlling the outcomes of life. Therefore, to be self-affirmed or "affirmed," as it is known in psychology, is to be very clear and decided upon one's self, without depending unduly on the opinion of others to believe in one's worth. Self-affirmation is far from responding with inadequate aggression; it simply means an inherent disposition of mind that leads the person to be autonomous, open, and treating the self and others with respect.

According to psychologists David K. Sherman's and Geoffrey L. Cohen's seminal work "The Psychology of Self-Defense: Self-Affirmation Theory" (2006), Steele's theory of self-affirmation can be enumerated in the four general rules listed below:

• People are primed to protect their perceived self-integrity and worth.
• The drive to protect self-integrity often results in defensive reactions. That is, when people or groups believe their self-integrity is threatened, they are driven to repair it. This may lead to a defensive response in order to make it less threatening. Such responses may include avoidance and denial.
• Self-integrity is flexible and can accommodate affirmation across different domains. People can respond to threats to self in one domain of their psyche, by affirming the self in another domain. For instance, a person may deal with the threat to their role as an employee, by emphasizing to the self what a good parent and spouse he or she is.

People can feel affirmed by engaging in actions that promote or remind them of "who they are" or that remind them of values and beliefs that are core to the self. When facing a difficult situation, core values, beliefs, and qualities that are most important to how individuals perceive themselves to be, provide a fertile arena for self-affirmation. In other words, self-affirmation gives a person "perspective" and a broader view of the self; thus, it anchors their sense of self, reducing the importance and weight of the threat to self and identity.

Applications

Self-affirmation theory offers frameworks to understand the defensive behaviors of people and groups. Threats to self-integrity are, in the end, tied to self-perceptions and as such, can take many shapes. People are, to different extents, watchful for situations and information that may question or threaten their self-integrity, to themselves and among others. These threats may be based upon real or perceived failures to meet social, cultural, professional, and other norms and standards.

Self-affirmation theory offers three types of strategies that people may use to cope with such threats:

Accommodation. People may "accommodate" the threat. In this case, an individual is open to accepting the threatening information—which may amount to accepting a failure—and use it as a prompt to change his or her actions or attitude. Nevertheless, the closer the threat is to a person's core or most important values and identity—and thus, to self-integrity—the harder it becomes to accept it and change.

Amelioration. Amelioration refers to improvement. In this case, individuals may react to threats by adapting them via various strategies, which may run from re-framing an incident as a learning opportunity to avoiding, dismissing, or denying it. These strategies are commonly known as defensive bias, or defense attribution, and are used as a psychological shield to protect the self from unwanted information. Avoiding or denying the threat, however, while it may serve to momentarily repair self-integrity, will not allow an individual to learn from his or her failures and errors

Affirmation. Affirming actions are an alternative kind of threat adaptation. Self-affirmations are things people tell themselves that include important factors of a person's life and character, albeit unrelated to the threatening information or event. Defensive adaptations respond directly to the threat; self-affirmations are indirect adaptations, in that they focus on psychological domains that are not directly linked to the threat. This allows the person to gain a wider perspective, and remind the self his or her value and worth is not contingent on the immediate situation or opinion of others. This strategy also has an ameliorating effect, because it reduces the need to distort the threat and react in a maladaptive manner, offering the opportunity to address the issue in a more detached and unbiased way.

Issues

One of the most salient issues addressed by experts in self-affirmation theory, is what happens when affirmations backfire—that is, when affirmations increase rather than decrease bias and resistance (to learning or change). Studies have found that this occurs when affirmations are within the same domain as the threatening information, rather than when a person self-affirms with values or factors from a psychological domain other than that from which the threat arises.

In general, self-affirmations from different domains—those that target a domain irrelevant to the threat—serve to reduce bias and, it follows, also reduce inflexibility or close-mindedness. However, in some cases, they may also increase uncertainty, in the sense that by promoting open-mindedness, they make people question dearly-held beliefs. On the other hand, same domain affirmations, as experts contend, may lead to the opposite effect, by increasing a person's self-confidence to such an extent that it promotes over-certainty and impunity. An example might be that of a person, prior to reading a report that may be critical of something important to that person, first shores up his or her psyche and defenses by reminding him- or herself of all the reasons why the issue is of personal importance.

Such affirmations from the same domain serve to buttress resistance to considering contrary arguments with an open mind and thus strengthen the natural inclination in people to oppose change. These studies have wide implications for all fields in which attitudinal or behavioral change is a goal, from legislation and policymaking, to education and health. In other words, it may be detrimental, they argue, to provide same-domain affirmations to groups that need to change for the better. A better strategy might be to help by leading to affirmations that are unrelated to the threat.

Another recent finding results from explorations into how given some contexts, some types of affirmations can lead a person to impunity, that is, to feeling above consequences or responsibility from harmful action, allowing a person to feel free to act without fear of punishment. This phenomenon involves affirmations of moral worth, especially in cases in which the right or wrong course of action is unclear and leaves space for internal "negotiation." For instance, prejudiced people feel freer to engage in acts of discrimination after affirmations to self—and others—that they are not prejudiced, usually in a context in which there is space for ambiguity. In other words, according to research, when people affirm their lack of bigotry they appear to become negligent about democratic or egalitarian principles. An example might be when a person starts a sentence with "Some of my best friends are…" and names a gender identity or ethnic group, before proceeding to say something disparaging about that group.

Similarly, when self-affirmations are meant to reinforce a person's self-perceived objectivity, they are led to believe that their beliefs, which they believe objective and unbiased, deserve to be put into practice. People who have "affirmed" themselves with such self-perceptions, for instance, are more likely to discriminate against others when hiring.

Research has been done around the issue of awareness, that is, the extent to which individuals are conscious of their biases and self-affirmations. The process of affirmation usually occurs unconsciously; people are unaware, not necessarily of the self-affirmations per se, but rather of their purpose. In most cases, affirmations do not operate in a deliberate manner and are more effective this way. When research participants have been made aware of the relationship between the process of self-affirmation and its threat-reduction goal, the strategy's effectiveness decreased.

Deliberate self-affirmations, that is, self-affirming with awareness and choice mediating the process, have shown promise as a strategy for the chronically anxious, and people can learn to actively use self-affirmation as a coping tool for everyday threats. Nevertheless, studies show that these are most beneficial when people choose to self-affirm without learning about the benefits prior to the self-affirmation process. Learning about its benefits seems to reduce its effectiveness, which would appear to support the contention that even though people can be taught to affirm in their daily lives, awareness may reduce some of its impact.

Terms & Concepts

Affirmed: The term "affirmed" has different meanings across a variety of fields. For the purposes of self-esteem, an affirmed person is understood to be somebody who feels welcomed, treated with dignity and respect, be it by the self or by others.

Coping: To face or to deal with struggles or challenges in a successful or adequate manner.

Domain-Relevant or -Irrelevant: Pertaining to the degree of relevancy or how it is related to the scope of the matter being examined.

Maladaptive: In psychology, it refers to behavior that reflects a failed or inadequate adaptation, which may provide antithetical outcomes, that is, contrary to expectations.

Self-Affirmation: Degree to which people are convinced—or must convince themselves—of their own capabilities, virtues, and worthiness.

Self-Integrity: Degree to which an individual is holistically aligned with himself or herself, in which his or her behavior and self-esteem is coherent with the values and goals held dear.

Bibliography

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Fielden, A. L., Sillence, E., Little, L., & Harris, P. R. (2016). Online self-affirmation increases fruit and vegetable consumption in groups at high risk of low intake. Applied Psychology: Health & Well-Being, 8(1), 3–18.

Fox, K., Harris, P., Jessop, D., Fox, K. J., Harris, P. R., & Jessop, D. C. (2017). Experimentally manipulated self-affirmation promotes reduced alcohol consumption in response to narrative information. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 51(6), 931–935.

Miyuki, O., & Mayu, K. (2015). Self-affirmation of university students and effective factors. Journal of Asian Regional Association for Home Economics, 22(1), 37–47. Retrieved December 20, 2017 from EBSCO Sociology Source Ultimate http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=117818744&site=ehost-live

Niles, A. N., Byrne Haltom, K. E., Lieberman, M. D., Hur, C., & Stanton, A. L. (2016). Writing content predicts benefit from written expressive disclosure: Evidence for repeated exposure and self-affirmation. Cognition & Emotion, 30(2), 258–274.

Pauketat, J., Moons, W., Chen, J., Mackie, D., & Sherman, D. (2016). Self-affirmation and affective forecasting: Affirmation reduces the anticipated impact of negative events. Motivation & Emotion, 40(5), 750–775.

Reavis, R. D., Ebbs, J. B., Onunkwo, A. K., & Sage, L. M. (2017). A self-affirmation exercise does not improve intentions to vaccinate among parents with negative vaccine attitudes (and may decrease intentions to vaccinate). Plos ONE, 12(7), 1–18.

Taber, J. M., Howell, J. L., Emanuel, A. S., Klein, W. M., Ferrer, R. A., & Harris, P. R. (2016). Associations of spontaneous self-affirmation with health care experiences and health information seeking in a national survey of US adults. Psychology & Health, 31(3), 292–309.

Velez, J. A., & Hanus, M. D. (2016). Self-affirmation theory and performance feedback: When scoring high makes you feel low. Cyberpsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, 19(12), 721–772.

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Suggested Reading

Emanuel, A. S., Howell, J. L., Taber, J. M., Ferrer, R. A., Klein, W. P., & Harris, P. R. (2018). Spontaneous self-affirmation is associated with psychological well-being: Evidence from a US national adult survey sample. Journal of Health Psychology, 23(1), 95–102.

Howell, A. (2017). Self-affirmation theory and the science of well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 18(1), 293–311. Retrieved December 20, 2017 from EBSCO Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=121238215&site=ehost-live

Matthews, S. (2017). Colonised minds? Post-development theory and the desirability of development in Africa. Third World Quarterly, 38(12), 2650–2663. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=126411790&site=ehost-live