Indiana University Bloomington, USA.
The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2023 Nov;49(11):1615-1632. doi: 10.1177/01461672221120612. Epub 2022 Sep 6.
Self-affirmation-reflecting on a source of global self-integrity outside of the threatened domain-can mitigate self-threat in education, health, relationships, and more. Whether people recognize these benefits is unknown. Inspired by the metamotivational approach, we examined people's beliefs about the benefits of self-affirmation and whether individual differences in these beliefs predict how people cope with self-threat. The current research revealed that people recognize that self-affirmation is selectively helpful for self-threat situations compared with other negative situations. However, people on average did not distinguish between self-affirmation and alternative strategies for coping with self-threat. Importantly, individual differences in these beliefs predicted coping decisions: Those who recognized the benefits of self-affirmation were more likely to choose to self-affirm rather than engage in an alternative strategy following an experience of self-threat. We discuss implications for self-affirmation theory and developing interventions to promote adaptive responses to self-threat.
自我肯定——反思威胁领域之外的全球自我完整性的来源——可以减轻教育、健康、人际关系等方面的自我威胁。人们是否认识到这些好处尚不清楚。受元动机方法的启发，我们研究了人们对自我肯定益处的看法，以及这些信念的个体差异是否预测人们如何应对自我威胁。当前的研究表明，与其他负面情况相比，人们认识到自我肯定对自我威胁情况具有选择性的帮助。然而，人们平均并没有将自我肯定与应对自我威胁的其他策略区分开来。重要的是，这些信念的个体差异预测了应对决策：那些认识到自我肯定益处的人更有可能在经历自我威胁后选择自我肯定而不是采取其他策略。我们讨论了自我肯定理论的意义和发展干预措施，以促进对自我威胁的适应性反应。
