Self affirmation theory was first conceived by Claude Steele (1988). It is a theory based on the principle that people wants to uphold the integrity of the self. The eventual goal of self is to guard the image of its self-integrity, principles and competence. Integrity is defined as the sense that one is a good and an appropriate person. The theory provides answers to the question of why people react in such a way to reinstate self-worth when their picture of self-integrity is endangered. In the theory, people respond to threats by using indirect psychological adaptation of affirming alternative self resources unconnected to the aggravating threat.
As a consequence, these affirmations allow people to deal with intimidating events and information without resorting to defensive biases, by satisfying the need to guard self-integrity in the face of danger. This affirmation allows people to act in response to the threatening information in an open and fair manner.
The need to guard prized characteristics is a key source of such prejudiced processing. Luckily, people identify with several values. Researchers discovered that providing people with self affirmation opportunities on alternative source of self-integrity leads to lesser partial assessment to threatening information. Self affirmation raises honesty of people to ideas that are difficult to accept.
Self affirmation pilots attitude change through cautious consideration of the information rather than through heuristic processing. Moreover, self-affirmation studies recommend that uneasiness resulting from cognitive discord could be overcome if their self-integrity is superior through affirmations of an alternative domain of identity.
Self-affirmations hearten people to take a greater view on their self-integrity. When dealing with daunting tasks, people perceive themselves as having more abilities and would feel less stressed.
Self affirmation helps eliminate self-serving partiality and group-serving partiality, which is prevalent in attributions and group judgments. By affirming some aspects of self, and unconnected to their group, an individual is able to preserve an overall perception of worth and integrity.
A person's culture imposes some effect on the process of self affirmation. In cultures that value independence, the self is emphasized, and the trait of independence stands out. In collectivist cultures, relationship is given priority and interdependence plays an important role. Collectivists would be less likely to be motivated to defend integrity because self esteem is less valuable. However, the general procedure that affirmation mitigates responses to threats appears to be invariant. Also, self-esteem affects the affirmation process and people who do affirmation in one aspect when they are facing threats to another aspect are believed to have more psychological support. Preceding studies proved that individuals with high self-esteem have more affirmation assets.
People having high self-esteem are more likely to rely on self affirmation. In general, self affirmation increases open-mindedness and flexibility. However, the domain from which threat and affirmation emerge is significant. In cases where threat and affirmation come from similar domain, self affirmation would lead to reduced open-mindedness and flexibility. Further research is essential to decide the circumstances under which affirmations lead to open-mindedness.
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