群际威胁与社会认知基本维度自我肯定对自我评价的影响

两个实验探索群际威胁情境下表达性和能动性自我肯定对个体自我评价的影响。实验一诱发群际威胁,操作表达性自我肯定,测量被试的自我评价水平。实验二与实验一采用相同的方法,诱发群际威胁,操作能动性自我肯定,之后测量自我评价水平。两个实验均发现,群际威胁组的自我评价显著低于控制组;在群际威胁情境下,表达性自我肯定组和能动性自我肯定组的自我评价显著高于无自我肯定组。研究表明,群际威胁虽然是群体水平的感知,但会对个体水平的自我评价产生消极影响,通过社会认知基本维度进行自我肯定能有效缓解群际威胁对自我评价的消极影响。自我肯定对群际威胁与自我评价之间关系的作用机制还需要进一步探讨。     

高自尊威胁后防御和消极情绪的特点:自尊和自我价值权变性的不同调节作用

采用实验法考察高自尊威胁后个体防御和消极情绪的特点,并分别考察自尊水平和自我价值权变性对自尊威胁后防御和消极情绪的不同调节作用。结果表明:(1)与受到低自尊威胁的大学生被试相比,高自尊威胁后被试表现出了较高的防御和消极情绪。(2)自尊水平能够在自尊威胁和消极情绪之间起调节作用,具体表现在,高自尊被试在高威胁后表现出了较高的消极情绪,而在低威胁后消极情绪较低;对于低自尊被试,无论自尊威胁程度如何,他们都表现出了较高的消极情绪。(3)自我价值权变性能够在自尊威胁和防御之间起调节作用,具体表现在,高自我价值权变性的被试在高自尊威胁后表现出了较高的防御,而低自尊威胁后防御较低;而低自我价值权变性的被试在两种威胁后都表现出了较高的防御。     

智力增长观对高威胁下自我评价的作用效果:呈现顺序和自尊的影响

以207名大学生为被试,采用两个研究考察在高威胁情境下,智力增长观对不同自尊水平的个体完成能力提升练习后自我评价的影响。结果表明:(1)当智力增长观在威胁情境前呈现时,在高威胁情境下,完成智力增长观写作任务的被试在练习后的内部自我评价显著高于控制组,并且智力增长观能够显著正向预测低自尊被试的内部自我评价。(2)当智力增长观在威胁情境后呈现时,在高威胁情境下,智力增长观能够显著正向预测高自尊被试的内部自我评价。(3)智力增长观任务对高威胁情境下被试完成练习后的外部自我评价无显著影响。     

挫折情境下自我肯定对执行功能的影响

为探讨挫折情境下自我肯定对执行功能的影响,创设挫折和非挫折情境,采用价值观自我肯定干预,通过Stroop范式和2-back范式分别测量抑制控制和工作记忆的刷新能力。结果发现,挫折情境下的Stroop任务和2-back任务反应时均高于非挫折情境;挫折情境下自我肯定组在Stroop任务和2-back任务上的反应时均显著低于非自我肯定组,而非挫折情境下两组的反应时没有显著性差异;Stroop效应量在情境与肯定条件上的交互作用不显著。结果表明挫折降低了执行功能的任务表现,自我肯定干预能够改善挫折情境下执行功能相关的任务成绩,促进了个体对工作记忆任务的刷新能力和Stroop任务的认知表现,但对抑制控制能力的改善没有明显作用。     

刻板印象威胁下价值肯定对任务表现的缓冲作用

本研究考察了在多重威胁框架下,价值肯定干预对女大学生在刻板印象威胁下的认知任务表现的作用,并比较了群体价值肯定和自我价值肯定的影响差异.实验1发现在群体目标刻板印象威胁下,群体价值肯定降低了受威胁个体的任务表现水平,被试在任务中表现出更大的Stroop干扰效应;实验2发现在自我目标刻板印象威胁下,群体价值肯定和自我价值...     

刻板印象威胁对学习困难中学生成就动机的影响

研究探讨学习困难中学生的刻板印象威胁及其对成就动机的影响。研究1采用实验法诱发学习困难中学生的刻板印象威胁,研究表明刻板印象威胁阻碍学习困难中学生心理旋转任务表现的提高。研究2在刻板印象威胁情境中,采用问卷法测量学习困难中学生的成就动机,刻板印象威胁组被试相比于对照组的成就动机水平较低,回避失败动机较高。研究3在刻板印象威胁诱发后加入自我肯定操纵,结果发现自我肯定组被试与对照组相比成就动机水平较高,回避失败动机水平较低。     

自我肯定研究述评

自我肯定是指通过肯定与威胁信息无关领域的自我价值,来维持自我整体性,从而降低防御反应。它可以通过完成自我价值观量表、描述重要的个人价值等方式来进行实验操纵。经过自我肯定的个体能更加客观、公正地处理威胁自我认同和群体认同的信息,促进个体的成长。这些作用可能是通过系统地思考说服信息的中央路径的认知加工来实现的。在未来的研究中,对个体最重要价值威胁情况下的自我肯定效应、自我肯定效应的多种机制的共同作用、自我肯定效应与群体肯定效应的区分以及自我与群体肯定效应的跨文化比较等方面还有待进一步的研究。     

不同心理一致感个体压力情境下的情绪特点研究

以46名大学生为被试,利用“九洞仪”创设实验室压力情境,考察不同心理一致感个体压力情境下的情绪反应及恢复特点。结果表明：（1）压力情境下,高、低心理一致感个体的情绪反应存在显著性差异。高心理一致感个体出现较多的积极情绪,低心理一致感个体则以消极情绪体验为主。（2）低心理一致感压力情境诱发出的消极情绪显著多于积极情绪,消极情绪的诱发量较大。（3）压力任务后,高心理一致感个体在情绪恢复量上显著多于低心理一致感个体,心理健康的自我康复力较大。（4）压力任务前后,低心理一致感个体的消极情绪诱发量显著高于恢复量,在消极情绪变化上表现出“诱发多,恢复少”的特点。     

自发社会比较中的威胁效应及自我平衡策略

个体通常利用社会比较进行自我评价, 而比较对象的选择及其对个体自我的影响是一个内隐的过程, 研究基于选择通达理论, 通过三个实验考察了个体自发比较时威胁效应的来源及其消解, 结果表明：(1)威胁效应来源于自主条件下比较对象的选择。个体在比较后的自我评价过程中激活了周围优秀人物的信息, 比较后自我评价水平降低, 引发社会比较的威胁; (2)中国文化背景下的个体在比较后存在威胁“泛化”现象, 不论操作任务是否与自我相关, 均会出现社会比较的威胁效应; (3)与周围优秀人物进行比较所导致的威胁效应, 可以通过自我肯定策略得以缓解, 使个体的整体自我系统重新恢复平衡。     

自我肯定缓冲新冠疫情引发的焦虑反应：一项随机对照研究

当个体知觉到环境中存在威胁时, 就会自动地引发个体的应激反应。而长期的应激会使个体产生一系列严重的心理和身体健康问题。大量的研究发现肯定自我价值可以缓冲由应激引发的负面情绪和身体反应。本研究通过实验的方法考察了肯定自我价值是否可以降低新冠肺炎(COVID-19)疫情引发的焦虑和抑郁情绪反应。220名被试被随机分配到自我价值肯定任务组或控制任务组, 被试在干预前(2月2日)和一个星期后(2月9日)完成焦虑和抑郁测量。研究结果发现相对于控制组在一周后比前测时表现出更严重的焦虑情绪, 自我价值肯定组在前测和一周后在焦虑情绪上没有显著的变化, 这一效应在控制了性别、年龄、受教育水平和家庭年收入后仍然存在。这些结果表明简短的(约10分钟)对自我价值的反思可以帮助个体缓冲疫情引发的焦虑情绪反应。这一发现对于从社会心理的视角进行疫情防护提供了重要的科学证据。     

Individualism and Collectivism: Implications for Women

This essay examines the nature and dynamics of individualism and collectivism as social and interpersonal phenomena. It considers the importance of affirming the true self as a key feature of individualism as conceived by Donald Capps. By means of cultural and gender analysis, the essay explores aspects of self-affirmation among women, especially Korean American women in both individualist and collectivist societies. It ultimately proposes a “self-affirming collectivism” that promotes the authentic individual self as imago Dei whose unique identity is expressed within community.     

Feeling Better About Self After Receiving Negative Feedback: When the Sense That Ability Can Be Improved Is Activated

Past studies suggest that managers and educators often consider negative feedback as a motivator for individuals to think about their shortcomings and improve their work, but delivering negative feedback does not always achieve desired results. The present study, based on incremental theory, employed an intervention method to activate the belief that a particular ability could be improved after negative feedback. Three experiments tested the intervention effect on negative self-relevant emotion. Study 1 indicated conveying suggestions for improving ability reduced negative self-relevant emotion after negative feedback. Study 2 tested whether activating the sense of possible improvement in the ability could reduce negative self-relevant emotion. Results indicated activating the belief that ability could be improved reduced negative self-relevant emotion after failure, but delivering emotion management information alone did not yield the same effect. Study 3 extended the results by affirming the effort participants made in doing the test, and found the affirmation reduced negative self-relevant emotion. Collectively, the findings indicated focusing on the belief that the ability could be improved in the future can reduce negative self-relevant emotion after negative feedback.     

From a terror management perspective: The efficacy of self-affirmation on organ donation-related thoughts and intentions in China

ABSTRACT

In 2015, the Chinese government officially abolished the practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners. However, the voluntary donor registration rate among the Chinese population is approximately 2% as of January 2020. Guided by self-affirmation theory and terror management theory, the present investigation examined a number of variables that may be related to donor registration intentions and a method to mitigate death thoughts and misconceptions. An online experiment was conducted in which 352 Chinese participants were randomly assigned to either a self-affirmation (i.e., affirming values that are important to the participants) or a no-affirmation condition. Results revealed that self-affirmation lowered death thoughts among the participants, which in turn were positively related to organ donation misperceptions. Inconsistent with terror management theory, the level of death thoughts was not directly related to participants’ intentions to register as organ donors. Instead, the relationship between the two was mediated by misperceptions toward organ donation.     

Self-affirmation and physical activity messages

We examined the effects of a self-affirmation intervention in conjunction with message frame on attentional bias toward physical activity messages, and explicit psychological and behavioral responses to these messages. Inactive participants (N = 153) completed either a self-affirmation or a control task, were told they were not active enough for health benefits, then read either a gain or loss-framed message, followed by an attentional bias task and questionnaires measuring message processing, psychological reactions and behavior. One week later, participants completed an on-line measure of physical activity. Message frame did not moderate the self-affirmation effect. Self-affirmed participants reported slightly higher self-efficacy for exercising in the future and slightly lower, but not significant, perceived threat than participants in the control group. Self-affirmation and messages may need to be further supplemented with more intense interventions accompanied with adequate resources to facilitate intentions for and actual behavioral change for a complex behavior like physical activity.     

Cognitive consequences of affirming the self: The relationship between self-affirmation and object construal

Previous research suggests that affirming one’s important values is a powerful way of protecting one’s general self integrity, allowing non-defensive processing of self-relevant information. In a series of four studies linking self-affirmation with construal level, we find that in addition to any self buffering effect, thinking about one’s values and why they are important more generally shifts cognitive processing towards superordinate and structured thinking. Self-affirmation leads participants to perceive a greater degree of structure within their selves (Study 1), to increasingly identify actions in terms of their end-states (Study 2), to more strongly distinguish between primary and secondary object features (Study 3) and to perform better on tasks requiring abstract, structured thinking than those requiring detail-oriented, concrete thinking. Together, these findings suggest that thinking about important values helps individuals to structure information and focus on the big picture.     

Testing multiple means of self-affirmation

The effects of self-affirmation manipulations are not yet well understood because several different affirmation manipulations have been tested using multiple dependent variables. The aim of the present research was to establish whether global self-feelings and self-esteem, or interpersonal positive feelings are affected by affirming the self. Experiment 1 showed that completing a kindness questionnaire led to adolescent girls reporting more positive interpersonal feelings, but no greater self-feelings or self-esteem than completing an opinions (control) questionnaire. Experiment 2 showed again that self-affirmation did not affect self-esteem, and that there were few differences between writing an essay about a cherished value, writing an essay about kindness, or completing a questionnaire about kindness in boosting positive interpersonal feelings. The findings are discussed in relation to self-affirmation theory and the possible practical implications of self-affirmation for aiding the delivery of social and health messages.     

The effect of self-affirmation on sexual prejudice

In three experiments, we explored the impact of a self-affirmation treatment on sexual prejudice (i.e., negative attitudes toward gays and lesbians). Studies 1 and 2 found that participants who were affirmed by valuing relationships with family and friends were significantly more prejudiced than participants who were affirmed by valuing other self-relevant characteristics. Relative to a non-affirmed control, the family/friends affirmation did not actually increase prejudice; however, other affirmations decreased bias. Study 3 replicated the finding that prejudice was higher among participants who affirmed to family/friends compared to those who affirmed to other values, and showed a mediator of the effect: the endorsement of traditional family values. That is, affirming to family/friends was associated with support for family values, which was positively associated with prejudice. These findings add to a growing body of evidence demonstrating the potential for self-affirmation to reduce bias, but establish that the type of value affirmed is an important consideration. Specifically, familial-based affirmations may undermine reduction of sexual prejudice because they remind individuals of values that many people see as being in conflict with expressing tolerant attitudes toward gays and lesbians.