title: Rewriting the self-fulfilling prophecy of social rejection: self-affirmation improves relational security and social behavior up to 2 months later.
abstract: Chronically insecure individuals often behave in ways that result in the very social rejection that they most fear. We predicted that this typical self-fulfilling prophecy is not immutable. Self-affirmation may improve insecure individuals' relational security, and this improvement may allow them to express more welcoming social behavior. In a longitudinal experiment, a 15-min self-affirmation improved both the relational security and experimenter-rated social behavior of insecure participants up to 4 weeks after the initial intervention. Moreover, the extent to which self-affirmation improved insecure participants' relational security at 4 weeks predicted additional improvements in social behavior another 4 weeks after that. Our finding that insecure participants continued to reap the social benefits of self-affirmation up to 8 weeks after the initial intervention demonstrates that it is indeed possible to rewrite the self-fulfilling prophecy of social rejection.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada V8W3P5. dstinson@uvic.ca
authors.forename: Danu Anthony
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Stinson
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Logel
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shepherd
authors.forename: Mark P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Zanna
mesh_terms: D059026:Diagnostic Self Evaluation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D012929:Psychological Distance; D012649:Self Concept; D012917:Social Adjustment; D012919:Social Behavior; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult