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.     

Constructing a self: The role of self-structure and self-certainty in social anxiety

Current cognitive models stress the importance of negative self-perceptions in maintaining social anxiety, but focus predominantly on content rather than structure. Two studies examine the role of self-structure (self-organisation, self-complexity, and self-concept clarity) in social anxiety. In study one, self-organisation and self-concept clarity were correlated with social anxiety, and a step-wise multiple regression showed that after controlling for depression and self-esteem, which explained 35% of the variance in social anxiety scores, self-concept clarity uniquely predicted social anxiety and accounted for an additional 7% of the variance in social anxiety scores in an undergraduate sample (N = 95) and the interaction between self-concept clarity and compartmentalisation (an aspect of evaluative self-organisation) at step 3 of the multiple regression accounted for a further 3% of the variance in social anxiety scores. In study two, high (n = 26) socially anxious participants demonstrated less self-concept clarity than low socially anxious participants (n = 26) on both self-report (used in study one) and on computerised measures of self-consistency and confidence in self-related judgments. The high socially anxious group had more compartmentalised self-organisation than the low anxious group, but there were no differences between the two groups on any of the other measures of self-organisation. Self-complexity did not contribute to social anxiety in either study, although this may have been due to the absence of a stressor. Overall, the results suggest that self-structure has a potentially important role in understanding social anxiety and that self-concept clarity and other aspects of self-structure such as compartmentalisation interact with each other and could be potential maintaining factors in social anxiety. Cognitive therapy for social phobia might influence self-structure, and understanding the role of structural variables in maintenance and treatment could eventually help to improve treatment outcome.     

Self-structure and emotional experience

Two studies examine individual differences in affective reactivity by linking emotional experience to cognitive self-structure. Consistent with the view that individuals with an evaluative compartmentalised self-structure are emotionally reactive, we find that evaluative compartmentalisation is associated with the experience of, and desire for, high-arousal positive (HAP) affect, whereas evaluative integration is associated with the experience of low-arousal positive (LAP) and low-arousal negative affect and the desire for LAP affect. Although compartmentalised individuals are less granular in their tendency to report experiencing both HAP and LAP, they are strongly differentiated in their perceptions of high-arousal states as positive and low-arousal states as negative. Thus, compartmentalised individuals' reactivity may be explained by their preference for HAP states and the ‘breadth’ of their emotionality (e.g., the tendency to experience sadness and nervousness at the same time).