If you've ever felt down and wanted to build yourself up, or you're generally in the self- or personal-development space, then you've probably heard about "affirmations" or "self-affirmations."
And they have either been life-changing for you 🤩 or super annoying 🙄.
My own opinion about this straddles and alternates between the two. But, not one to just rest my thoughts on "opinions," I sought out to see what the science says about this.
So do self-affirmations work in helping you feel better and lift your self-esteem?
The answer is YES and NO, because it depends on what is meant by "self-affirmations," what kind of affirmations are being done, and the type of person doing the affirmation.
This post will get to the bottom of this to let you know what type of self-affirmations DO work, and when to stay away from them.
(And if you don't know what they are, here's an example from the internet when I googled "self-affirmation" image).
Self-Integrity as a Precursor to Self-Affirmation
To understand what self-affirmations actually are, we first need to understand a core human need, which is the need to maintain self-integrity.
Self-integrity is a general sense that we are worthy, are capable, and are able to have autonomy and control over outcomes in our lives. This is not to say we want to feel superior or to need praise; it's about having a general sense that we are "good enough" or "adequate."
The key thing to note is that, this need is about our overall sense of self-integrity, that we are good enough as a human being in general, not for any specific domain.
For example, we may feel good enough as a baker 🥐, but not good enough as a soccer player ⚽️. However, if you average across many domains of your life, and you can rate yourself as good enough in more domains than not, then generally you will have good self-integrity and won't feel bad about yourself.
But let's say you don't actually even care about athletics; in this way, even if you didn't feel good enough in yourself as a soccer player, you will still possess a high level of self-integrity, because you still see yourself as a good, capable person in domains that you actually care about, like being a good baker, a good friend, a good daughter, etc.
Now, the cool thing about our psyche is that, we have a flexible self-system, such that, if you feel a sense of self-integrity in one domain that is important to you, you can actually "import" that into another domain that is also important to you. Let me explain this in more concrete terms using buckets as analogies.
🪣 🪣 🪣
Let's say you have 3 buckets of life domains: baker bucket 🥐, soccer player bucket ⚽️, and friend bucket 👯♀️. Let's say you don't actually care about the soccer bucket ⚽️, so the water level there is low but it doesn't really matter.
You, instead, do care about your baker 🥐 and friend buckets 👯♀️. However, recently, you have been doing poorly at your bakery job. Maybe it's because your boss got new flour or machines, and you're not used to it, which in turns make you not be as good as you normally are (I'm not a baker, so just go along with me here!) So here, your baker bucket may be emptying.
However, you've been a really great friend lately 👯♀️. You've lent an ear to your friend going through a breakup, or maybe you've helped your other friend move. So your friend bucket is full. In fact, it may be overflowing. So here, to maintain your overall sense of self-integrity, you can even pour the water from your friend bucket into your bakery bucket such that your OVERALL or GENERAL sense of self-integrity is still high or good enough!
Here's a comprehensive diagram of our global self-integrity:
From Sherman & Geoffrey, 2006
When Do Self-Affirmations Come in and When Do They Go Wrong
Self-affirmations come in when there is a threat to one's sense of self-integrity.
A psychological threat or stressful information are those that call into question whether you are in fact good enough. In this scenario, maybe the croissants you bake are no longer coming out flakey and tasty, and gets you thinking, "Oh my god, I'm not good at being a baker. I suck!" 😩 🥐
And to regain your sense of self-integrity, you may think you should try "self-affirmations" and think positive things about this domain and say something like, "I am a good baker" over and over again to yourself in the mirror each morning. Or at least this is what the internet self-help is telling you to do.
Well folks, that is the WRONG THING TO DO ❌
You can't just say something that you don't believe is true, and with no current evidence for yourself that it is true, and force yourself to suddenly believe it. It's not going to work, and you won't feel better and may even feel worse about yourself (more on this later).
What does the Science Say About How To Do Self-Affirmations Instead?
Psychologists define self-affirmations as "acts that demonstrates' one's adequacy" that can help one regain self-integrity, if the self-integrity is being threatened.
Generally, self-affirmations don't need to be big acts like going out to win a contest; it's about regaining or affirming one's sense of general adequacy (and not superiority). Self-affirming acts can be as simple as updating one's Facebook status (no, really! #science), spending time with your best friends, or even volunteering for a cause you care about. It's about refilling the buckets that matter to you.
🌟A self-affirmation intervention that has been shown to work, with scientific evidence, is writing about one's personal values.🌟
Usually, in this intervention, people are first asked to select their top value or rank them from a list of values. Then, they are asked to write about that value(s) and provide examples of times the value(s) were important to them.
The caveat here is that, usually, when administered by a psychologist, the list of values may be edited such that the one(s) under current threat is excluded. For example, "health" may be excluded for someone who's stressed about a chronic illness. (See Today's Action section to try this yourself).
Here are two examples of self-affirming writings from actual people:
“My relationship with my family is very important to me because it is my parents and brother who helped push me to be who I am today. Without them, I probably wouldn’t have the patience and motivation to have applied for this university and be successful here. Whenever I have a problem, it is my family I can go to to help me through it. My friends are also very important. If I didn’t have the strong loving relationship with my friends from home, I wouldn’t be who I am today. My new friends that I have made [here] are also a big part in my life because they make me smile every day.”
“Dance is important to me, because it is my passion, my life. My second home is the dance studio, my second family is my dance team. My family and friends are so important to me, even more than dance. My family, I can’t live without them. My friends, I am my real self around them (and my sister). I can be silly, goofy, and weird and they don’t care, they accept me for who I am. . . . And for being creative, I LOVE being creative in dance. When I’m dancing or making a dance it takes me to another place.””
One thing to make really clear is that self-affirmation is NOT the same as self-enhancement. Self-affirmation is about seeing yourself as who you really are, and that you're worthy and enough in a domain of your life that you do feel that way already. On the contrary, self-enhancement (or self-aggrandizing) is like lying to yourself, trying to compensate for what you don't actually have, and generating a "lofty self-image" that actually requires more of your cognitive resources to maintain (i.e., to "lie" to yourself).
Why Do Self-Affirmations Work?
Doing self-affirmations in this way works because it helps people gain perspective that they are more than the thing/identity under threat. Usually, under stress or psychological threat, we become narrow-minded about the problem at hand, which is completely normal as our brain wants to hone in on a "problem" or "danger". So asking people to think about their other values and to think about examples from those values allow people to see themselves more holistically, and to see that they are still good enough as a whole human, vs the overemphasis on this particular domain under threat.
Using our bucket analogy, it's like the particular bucket under threat has holes it in right now, so you shouldn't try to fill this bucket. And when you're so busy worrying about this leaky bucket, you forget that there are many other buckets you can fill instead. So if you think about other values in life, and go fill the water levels of those other buckets instead, then your OVERALL water levels (self-integrity) can still be full.
Newer research on self-affirmation has also been able to show brain signals that suggests that the affirmed brain "is more oriented towards learning opportunities," aligning well with the explanation that the brain "broadens" its perspectives (vs narrowing in on the threat).
The Paradox of Self-Affirmation
You may be wondering, "Wait, so if I think I'm a bad baker, but then I feel better about myself as a person by affirming my other values, wouldn't I still feel bad as a baker?"
You may or may not.
The paradox of self-affirming something else important to you is that it can actually help you with the original stressor.
If you're stressed out about being a bad baker, what tends to happen is that our focus gets narrowed, and our cognitive resources may be used up in unproductive things like rumination, "I'm such a sucky baker. I'm not good at anything. Now that I think about it, I haven't been eating well or exercising much either, wow I'm trash."
Others may end up using other maladaptive coping strategies like avoidance, suppression, or rationalization, which may also end up making the original problem worse. In one study on women concerned with their weight, the "preoccupation with [their] weight predicts distress, poor eating, lack of exercise, and ironically, weight gain." (Side note, feeling stressed or psychological stress can actually increase appetite for sugary and high-fat foods!)
However, once you self-affirm and feel better about yourself as a person, it helps you see yourself and life in perspective, and you may then feel less burdened by the psychological threat. In turn, this can free up your cognitive resources to actually figure out how to become a better baker! 🥐 😊
Moreover, self-affirmation has also been found to reduce defensiveness. Defensiveness are maladaptive responses evoked to protect the self from psychological threat. For example, people may denigrate others to feel better about themselves ("Well, my co-worker is an even shittier baker!"), deny responsibility for failures ("The new flour used for baking sucks, it's not my fault!"), or deny that being a good baker is an identity that actually matters to them. Notice that these defensive responses may protect the person from the psychological threat in the short term, but actually "undermine growth and prove self-defeating in the long term," as they may not be getting to the root cause or trying to become a better baker.
Timing of Self-Affirmations and Long-Term Effects
One important thing to point out is that the timing of affirmations matter. In one study, "affirmations reduced defensiveness when they occurred either before the presentation of the threatening information or soon after. But once participants had engaged in defensive rationalization, the affirmation could not undo it."
Another strategy proposed to help with long-term behavioural change is to apply self-affirmation right before the "risk" behaviour occurs.
For example, you want to think to yourself, "If I start ruminating about how I suck as a baker, then I will think about the other things I value about myself." (Side fun fact, this is a strategy proposed by Dr. Omid Fotuhi, a friend from my alma mater!).
This timing of self-affirmations at the "decision/choice points" are especially important as research on self-affirmation has shown promising results for long-term effects on changing people's attitudes and motivations, which is good news for changing how we see or feel about ourselves, but it has shown mixed results for long-term behavioural changes. Hence, the recommendation to apply a "dose" of self-affirmation every time one is acting in a way not aligned to a more positive outcome.
YOUR MIND CAN AFFECT YOUR BODY
I have written before about the powerful connection between the mind and the body in a previous blog post, and we see it here again. There's data showing that, in women who were concerned about their weight, those who had the standard values affirmation intervention actually had lower BMI and smaller waist circumference 2.5 months later compared to those assigned to the non-self-affirmed condition. The researchers speculated that, by self-affirming their other values, the women were able to feel less stress in general, and then use their cognitive resources to instead go into their working memory used to maintain focus on long-term goals (or weight loss).
There's also data showing that, in people who had to give a speech in front of judges, (a simulated stressful condition), those who did the self-affirmation exercise before the speech did not have elevated levels of cortisol (the "stress" hormone) compared to baseline levels, but those who did not practice self-affirmation showed elevated levels of cortisol after the speech.
When Do Self-Affirmations NOT Work?
Earlier I mentioned that self-affirmations do work, but it has to be the "right" kind of affirmation (I'm going to call this "scientific self-affirmation"), namely, thinking about (other) values you care about, and writing about/provide examples of the times the values have shown up/been important to you.
So when do they not work?
The first thing to point out is the difference between "self-affirmation" vs "positive self-statements."
What we tend to see on the internet or non-scientific self-help books that is labeled as "affirmations" are mostly actually "positive self-statements."
For example, this image I showed you earlier are examples of "positive self-statements" and are NOT necessarily "self-affirmations" that have been shown to help with mood and self-esteem.
In psychology, the self-affirmation theory is a specific theory with evidence to support it, and the "self-affirmation" that helps is writing about your values, not just repeating sentences like the ones in the image over and over again.
These are positive self-statements, NOT self-affirmations.
Ok, so let's now look at the evidence of whether these "positive self-statements" (AKA "internet self-affirmation") work to boost mood and self-esteem.
Dr. Joanne Wood and colleagues tackled this question directly. They asked people to repeat phrases such as "I am a loveable person" (a positive self-statement) to see whether they felt better and had higher self-esteem.
What they found across multiple studies was that, repeating these positive self-statements did help people feel better and develop a higher self-esteem BUT ONLY FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO ALREADY CAME IN WITH HIGH SELF-ESTEEMS!
On the contrary, doing so BACKFIRED FOR THOSE WITH LOW SELF-ESTEEM! They showed worse moods and lower self-esteem compared to low-self-esteem people who were not asked to repeat these positive phrases.
The sad thing here is that, it's usually the people with low self-esteem who wants to/needs to feel better about themselves, but doing this is actually detrimental to their moods and self-esteem.
This honestly makes me mad because people are trying to help themselves, but there are shitty advice out there not based on evidence, and may actually be hindering their growth as humans. #knowbetterdobetter
Another thing to note is the wrong kind of scientific self-affirmation. One way for the scientific self-affirmation to NOT work as well is if you choose the wrong values to try to affirm in the first place. Examples are values that are narrow and self-centred, related to power and status or financial success, or values that are conditional and based on external standards, such as others' approval. These have been shown to be "less effective than affirmations that focus...on values that transcend [oneself]" like compassion and service to others, or on "less conditional sources of integrity" like being loved.
So the takeaway from today's post is that Self-Affirmations DO work if you do the RIGHT kind of affirmation! Today's Action will help you practice, and you can use it anytime you are feeling down about yourself.
(One boundary condition of the study above to note is that, these results of repeating positive self-statements (or “internet self-affirmations”) were found in Westerners, where it's the norm to endorse self-statements, whereas East Asians are less likely to endorse self-statements in the first place, a well-documented phenomenon in cultural psychology). So these findings may not hold true for East Asians or those from other collectivistic cultures.
The majority of this post is based on the Annual Review of Psychology paper, "The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention" by Drs. Geoffrey L. Cohen & David K. Sherman (2014).
Today’s Action
Note: Remember that self-affirmation has been shown to help if the person feels a psychological threat to their identity or they feel insecured about something. If you don't currently feel that way in any domain of your life, especially in domains that are important to you (think baker vs soccer player from the earlier example), then this exercise may not do much for you. But you can practice anyway such that when you do feel bad about yourself, you know how to do it!
Instructions for Scientific Self-Affirmation
Think of a top value that is core to you or important to you.
This should be a value that is not related to the current issue you are feeling psychologically threatened about. (For example, if you are currently feeling bad about not being healthier, like not going to the gym or not eating healthily, then don't write about health.)
Alternatively, you can rank order values from the list below, and choose the top one to write about.
Aesthetics = an appreciation of the arts (art, music, theatre), form, harmony
Social = an interest in and caring for others, altruism, philanthropy
Political = having influence and power, leadership
Religion or Spirituality = unity, with a tendency to seek to comprehend the cosmos as a whole
Business/Economics = an interest in business and finance, practicality
Science/Pursuit of Knowledge = discovery of truth with interests that are empirical, critical, and rational
Now, write about why your (highest-ranked) value is important to you, and write about a time or example of when it had been particularly important to you.
See how you feel after!
Self-Esteem Scale
For those of you curious about your self-esteem, here is one most commonly used self-esteem questionnaire.
Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale
Below is a list of statements dealing with your general feelings about yourself.
Please indicate how strongly you agree or disagree with each statement
(Strongly Agree = 4, Agree = 3, Disagree = 2, Strongly Disagree = 1)
On the whole, I am satisfied with myself.
At times I think I am no good at all.*
I feel I have a number of good qualities.
I am able to do things as well as most other people.
I feel I do not have much to be proud of, compared to most others.*
I certainly feel useless at times.*
I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others.
I wish I could have more respect for myself.*
All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure.*
I take positive attitude toward myself.
Items with * are reverse-scored (so Strongly Agree = 1, Agree = 2, Disagree = 3, Strongly Disagree = 4)
Sum the scores for all 10 items. Higher scores indicate higher self-esteem. Highest possible score is 40 and lowest is 10.
On average, people around the world score 31, and people in USA score 32. So if you scored lower than 31-32, you have lower self-esteem than 50% of people. If you scored lower than 20, your score is at the bottom third of the world population.
Share with me what you have written if you’d like!
Until next time, Transcenders!
~Pylin
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P.P.S. I’d love to hear from you! Let me know if you love a topic, don’t like a topic, want to hear about a certain topic. I’m all about learning from others and connecting! Email link below or pylin@drpylin.com