CHANGING MOTIVATION 175Using self-affirmation to help increase the effectiveness of
persuasive messagesSelf-affirmation involves reflecting on one’s cherished values, actions or attributes.
As a result of such self-reflection individuals recall the sense of who they are and
what they stand for in the face of perceived threats to their identity (Steele, 1988).
Self-affirmation theory suggests that people are strongly motivated to maintain self-
integrity and that because health messages are often perceived as threatening to
self-integrity (e.g. suggesting the individual is not engaging in healthy behaviours)
individuals may be motivated to find fault with such messages. So, for example, a
smoker exposed to a health message about the risks of smoking may protect
his/her self-integrity in one of two ways, either play down the potential risks of
smoking set out in the message or make renewed efforts to quit smoking.
Unfortunately from the point of view of the originator of the message it is often the
former response that is adopted. Self-affirmation theory offers a useful way round
this problem. It is suggested that self-integrity can be restored or reinforced by
affirming sources of self-worth that are important to the person’s identity but
unrelated to the threat. For example, a smoker may remind herself of her strengths
as a mother leading to the self-concept of being a smoker becoming less
threatening to her self-integrity. Importantly, self-affirming thoughts can reduce the
likelihood of self-threatening information in persuasive messages being dismissed.
The idea is that self-affirming can promote more objective appraisal of threatening
material in persuasive messages and so lead to more behaviour change consistent
with the content of the message.
Epton et al. (2015) reviewed 144 studies testing the effects of self-affirmation
on health-related cognition, affect and behaviour. Overall there appeared to be good
evidence that self-affirming promotes greater general and personal acceptance of
health-risk information and less playing down of message content. For example,
Armitage et al.(2008) reported self-affirmation to promote acceptance of
information about the health risks of smoking among a sample of smokers. Several
studies also show that self-affirmation led to stronger intentions to change health
risk behaviours (Armitage et al., 2008) and even health-relevant behaviours
(Armitage et al., 2008; Sherman, Nelson and Steele, 2000). For example, Sherman
et al.(2000, study 2) showed that compared to the non-self-affirmed the self-
affirmed took more leaflets about HIV and purchased more condoms. Ferrer et al.
(2012) recently reported that among female student drinkers compared to non-self-
affirmed those who self-affirmed were more likely to form implementation
intentions about reducing alcohol consumption following reading an article linking
excessive alcohol consumption to breast cancer (see Sweeney and Moyer, 2015
for another recent review of the effects of self-affirmation on responses to health
messages).FOCUS 8.1