title: Self-affirmations provide a broader perspective on self-threat.
abstract: We present an "affirmation as perspective" model of how self-affirmations alleviate threat and defensiveness. Self-threats dominate the working self-concept, leading to a constricted self disproportionately influenced by the threat. Self-affirmations expand the size of the working self-concept, offering a broader perspective in which the threat appears more narrow and self-worth realigns with broader dispositional self-views (Experiment 1). Self-affirmed participants, relative to those not affirmed, indicated that threatened self-aspects were less all-defining of the self (although just as important), and this broader perspective on the threat mediated self-affirmation's reduction of defensiveness (Experiment 2). Finally, having participants complete a simple perspective exercise, which offered a broader perspective on the self without prompting affirmational thinking (Experiment 3a), reduced defensiveness in a manner equivalent to and redundant with a standard self-affirmation manipulation (Experiment 3b). The present model offers a unifying account for a wide variety of seemingly unrelated findings and mysteries in the self-affirmation literature.
authors.affiliation: University of California, Berkeley, USA ClaytonCritcher@haas.berkeley.edu.
authors.forename: Clayton R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Critcher
authors.affiliation: Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Dunning
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012649:Self Concept; D013334:Students; D014481:United States
keywords: defensiveness; perspective; self-affirmation; threat; trivialization