Centre of Research Excellence for Chronic Respiratory Disease, School of Medicine, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 23, Hobart TAS 7001, Australia.
Health Psychol. 2013 May;32(5):561-70. doi: 10.1037/a0029887.
Health promotion often faces the problem that populations with high behavioral risk profiles respond defensively to health promotion messages by negating risk or reactant behavior. Self-affirmation theory proposes that defensive reactions are an attempt of the self-system to maintain integrity. In this article, we examine whether a self-affirmation manipulation can mitigate defensive responses to personalized visual risk feedback in the skin cancer prevention context (ultraviolet [UV] photography), and whether the effects pertain to individuals with high behavioral risk status (high personal relevance of tanning).
We conducted a full-factorial randomized controlled trial (N = 292; age 11-71) following a 2 * 2 design (UV photo yes/no, self-affirmation yes/no). Follow-up period was 2 weeks. Subsequent tanning behavior, sun avoidance intentions, and risk perception.
A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed a three-way interaction between risk feedback, the self-affirmation manipulation, and risk status for the three outcome measures. Follow-up analyses of variance (ANOVAs) indicated that high-risk individuals receiving only the risk feedback intervention reacted defensively and reported higher exposure. A self-affirmation manipulation mitigates this reactance effect both on the level of cognitions and behavior.
Self-affirmation has influential implications not only for Social Psychology but also for health prevention measures. The findings support the effectiveness of self-affirmation in reducing reactant and defensive reactions to personalized visual risk feedback. Interactions with health risk status indicate that self-affirmation might increase the effectiveness of health promotion messages in high-risk populations.
健康促进常常面临这样的问题，即行为风险特征较高的人群会通过否定风险或反应性行为来对健康促进信息做出防御性反应。自我肯定理论提出，防御性反应是自我系统为维护完整性而做出的尝试。在本文中，我们检验了自我肯定操作是否可以减轻皮肤癌预防背景下（紫外线[UV]摄影）个性化视觉风险反馈的防御性反应，以及这种影响是否与行为风险状态较高的个体有关（晒黑的个人相关性高）。
我们进行了一项完全因子随机对照试验（N=292；年龄 11-71 岁），采用 2*2 设计（UV 照片有/无，自我肯定有/无）。随访期为 2 周。随后进行了晒黑行为、避免日晒意图和风险感知的测量。
多变量方差分析（MANOVA）显示，在三种结果测量中，风险反馈、自我肯定操作和风险状态之间存在三向交互作用。方差分析（ANOVAs）的后续分析表明，仅接受风险反馈干预的高风险个体表现出防御性反应，并报告了更高的暴露水平。自我肯定操作减轻了这种反应性效应，无论是在认知层面还是行为层面。
自我肯定不仅对社会心理学有重要影响，而且对健康预防措施也有重要影响。这些发现支持了自我肯定在减少个性化视觉风险反馈的反应性和防御性反应方面的有效性。与健康风险状态的相互作用表明，自我肯定可能会提高高风险人群中健康促进信息的有效性。
