Individual differences in self-affirmation: Distinguishing self-affirmation from positive self-regard

ABSTRACT

Research into self-affirmation has almost exclusively employed experimental manipulations. In this paper we address individual differences in the tendency to respond to threats with self-affirming cognitions and distinguish this from two overlapping constructs: habitual positive self-thought and trait self-esteem. Items we designed to measure self-affirmation were represented by three first-order factors and loaded on a higher-order factor, creating the Spontaneous Self-Affirmation Measure (SSAM). The SSAM correlated moderately with self-esteem and habitual positive self-thought. In competitive analyses, the SSAM was an independent predictor of a large number of outcomes. The studies provide evidence about the correlates of individual differences in reported spontaneous self-affirmation in response to threat and the contribution made to this response by habitual positive self-thought and trait self-esteem.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-affirmation
• self-esteem
• habitual positive self-thought
• threat
• individual differences

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2015-0429]. We would like to thank Suzanne Donald, Helen Bromley, Robert Rumgay, Katie Watson, Paul Norman, Paschal Sheeran, and Tom Webb for their assistance with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Indeed, the widespread tendency to use values affirmations as the means of successfully inducing self-affirmation (e.g., McQueen & Klein, 2006) relies on values-based resources being available to a wide range of participants, and findings indicating that those low in self-esteem are not disadvantaged by such manipulations (e.g., Napper et al., 2009) or may even benefit most from them (e.g., Düring & Jessop, 2014) suggest that low self-esteem participants can find values with which to self-affirm.

2. In addition, to control for response tendency, the SSAM contained three filler negative items. These are not included in analyses reported in this paper.

3. One SSA item (“Thinking about the things I can control”) did not load sufficiently on any of the three factors. Three other SSA items (“Recalling times I did the right thing”, “Thinking about the things that I value about myself”, and “Thinking about the things that are important to me”) loaded too highly on two different factors, presumably because they could refer either to personal values or personal strengths. Consequently, these four items were dropped from the analysis. In a preliminary EFA model, all but one of the of HIPT items loaded satisfactorily on a single factor. The exception (“I don’t do consciously”) was dropped from the analysis.

4. Of note, the correlation between the SSAM and the self-affirming reflections subscale (.77) was significantly higher than either the correlation between the HIPT and the subscale (.46), χ²(1) = 48.82, p < . 001, or that between the RSES and the subscale (.49), χ²(1) = 56.50, p < .001.

5. Of note, however, self-clarity was predicted by the SSAM values factor (.15, p = .026; see Study 1 supplemental materials).

6. In the embedded self-affirmation condition participants were required to choose one of the three sources of self-affirmation in the SSAM to think about when reading the brochure. For further details, see the Study 4 supplemental materials.

7. Experimental condition was included as a predictor in all analyses in studies 4 and 5.

8. A participant flow diagram can be found in supplemental materials (Figure S2).

9. Immediately before and after the self-affirmation manipulation we assessed feelings of state self-compassion (Lindsay & Creswell, 2014). Immediately after the manipulation we also measured several other variables, including positive other-related affect (Crocker, Niiya, & Mischkowski, 2008), mood (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2003), self-evaluative certainty and subjective self-ambivalence (DeMarree, Morrison, Wheeler, & Petty, 2011). Findings are reported in the Study 5 supplemental materials.