Comparing self-affirmation manipulations to reduce alcohol consumption in university students

Abstract

Objective: Self-affirmation theory proposes that defensive processing prevents people from accepting health-risk messages, which may explain university students’ dismissal of risk-information about binge drinking. SA-interventions may encourage non-biased processing of such information through impacting on interpersonal feelings and self-esteem. This study compared two self-affirmation manipulations on interpersonal feelings, self-esteem, message processing, message acceptance and subsequent alcohol consumption.

Participants: UK university students (N = 454).

Methods: Participants were randomly allocated to one of three conditions (Self-affirmation Implementation Intention, Kindness Questionnaire, Control) before reading health-risk information about binge drinking. This was followed by measures of interpersonal feelings, self-esteem, message processing, acceptance and behavioral intentions. Alcohol consumption was assessed one week later.

Results: The self-affirmation manipulations had non-significant effects on all outcome variables.

Conclusion: Consistent with previous research, the results indicate that self-affirmation interventions are not effective for reducing alcohol consumption in university students.

Keywords:

• University
• self-affirmation
• binge drinking
• alcohol

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United Kingdom and received approval from the University of Sheffield Research Ethics Committe.

Funding

No funding was used to support this research and/or the preparation of the manuscript.

Notes

1 Alcohol consumption was significantly reduced across all three conditions post-intervention at Time 2, at the p=.05 significance level; as assessed by repeated measures t-tests,

Control: t (129) = 3.14, p = .002, Kindness: t (95) = 4.63, p < .001, SA-II: t (132) = 4.12, p < .001.