Tang David, Schmeichel Brandon J
Department of Psychology, 4235 TAMU, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4235, USA.
Biol Psychol. 2015 Jan;104:108-15. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2014.11.011. Epub 2014 Dec 8.
Self-affirmation is known to reduce defensive psychological responses to ego threats. The current experiment tested the hypothesis that self-affirmation reduces physiological responses to a form of ego threat-interpersonal evaluation. Participants wrote an essay and received either neutral or insulting evaluative feedback about their essay, ostensibly from another participant. Then participants wrote about a core personal value (self-affirmation) or about a less important value (no self-affirmation). Lastly, participants played a competitive reaction time game that permitted them to blast their purported evaluator with noise. Noise blasts did not vary across conditions, but mean arterial blood pressure increased in response to being evaluated and returned to baseline more quickly following self-affirmation. Further, insulting (versus neutral) evaluative feedback caused a greater increase in heart rate, except among those who self-affirmed following the evaluation manipulation. These results suggest that self-affirmation facilitates the return to baseline cardiovascular activity following interpersonal evaluation.
众所周知，自我肯定能够减少对自我威胁的防御性心理反应。当前的实验检验了这样一个假设，即自我肯定能够减少对一种自我威胁形式——人际评价——的生理反应。参与者写了一篇文章，并收到关于其文章的中性或侮辱性评价反馈，表面上是来自另一位参与者。然后，参与者写下一个核心个人价值观（自我肯定）或一个不太重要的价值观（无自我肯定）。最后，参与者进行了一个竞争性反应时间游戏，游戏中他们可以用噪音轰炸他们所谓的评价者。不同条件下的噪音轰炸没有差异，但平均动脉血压在受到评价时会升高，而在自我肯定后会更快恢复到基线水平。此外，侮辱性（相对于中性）评价反馈会导致心率有更大幅度的增加，但在评价操作后进行自我肯定的人除外。这些结果表明，自我肯定有助于在人际评价后恢复到基线心血管活动水平。
