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Dealing with Social Exclusion
Published in S. Alexander Haslam, Psychological Insights for Understanding COVID-19 and Society, 2020
Susanna Timeo, Paolo Riva, Maria Paola Paladino
Self-affirmation is a strategy that reminds people of their values and positive aspects (Steele, 1988). Within the context of social exclusion, self-affirmation may be a strategy to raise self-esteem. Accordingly, recent studies showed some promising results. Self-affirmation seems to improve need-satisfaction (Hales, Wesselmann, & Williams, 2016) and the executive control of excluded participants (Burson, Crocker, & Mischkowski, 2012). Moreover, even though exclusion threatens social relationships when given a chance to affirm a social or an intellectual area of life, excluded people still prefer to talk about the importance of social values (Knowles, Lucas, Molden, Gardner, & Dean, 2010). This result may be taken as proof of the importance of relationships to human beings. However, the mechanism by which self-affirmation works is still under debate. Some researchers argue that instead of just raising self-esteem, the recall of personal values produces a big-picture focus (Wakslak & Trope, 2009). Focusing on values would make people think of the most important aspects of their lives, thus enlarging their horizon of priorities compared to an exclusionary experience. Self-affirmation helps people put the negative event or threat into a broader perspective and focus on long-term values, thus minimizing the detrimental effects of a single instance of social disconnection.
Overcoming verbal-emotional abuse
Published in Patricia A. Murphy, A Career and Life Planning Guide for Women Survivors:, 2020
The basic tasks of self-affirmation work are identification, transformation, and repetition. Identification involves the process of discovering the negative thoughts and beliefs we hold about ourselves. Transformation is the process of turning the negative thoughts and beliefs into affirmations. Repetition of the affirmations is the healing process which can be tailor made to suit your personal preferences, and your life circumstances.
Life Enrichment through Intellect
Published in Lisa D. Hinz, Beyond Self-Care for Helping Professionals, 2018
Self-affirmation has been described as an integral part of the “psychological immune system,” which occurs when an individual calls upon internal resources to reinforce their own sense of self and cope with challenges (Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg, & Wheatley, 1998). Self-affirmation is a process whereby people reflect on their core values and signature strengths (Harris, 2011) and in doing so enhance positive qualities like determination, self-control, and healthy habits. Self-affirmation can provide people with the ability to take a wider view of their lives and more effectively think through the effects of their current activities on long-term interests (Harris, 2011). When people are more invested in their long-range outcomes, they are more likely to discriminate between healthy and unhealthy behaviors, and to choose healthy ones. According to Gilbert, et al. (1998), a simple way to engage in self-affirmation is to rank order a list of one’s core values and then write an essay about the top value, including why this is the most important value and a time when the value played a significant role in guiding behavior. Taking the time to reflect on core values and signature strengths offers people the opportunity to appreciate their unique personality traits and potentially reframe adverse life experiences, increasing engagement and life enrichment overall (Seligman, 2011).
Identifying Core Values with a Hierarchical, Ipsative, Preference Assessment
Published in Journal of Personality Assessment, 2023
Harold Stanislaw, Jamie McCreary
McClelland (1985) noted that “an understanding of how implicit and self-attributed motives function … has important practical implications for psychological adjustment” (1985, p. 700). Accordingly, practitioners have leveraged personal values to design highly effective interventions. For example, self-affirmation (reflecting on one’s values) is associated with a variety of positive outcomes. It promotes self-compassion (Thomaes et al., 2012) and these feelings can foster more positive behavior toward others (Lindsay & Creswell, 2014). Self-affirmation also limits rumination after failure (Koole et al., 1999) and can improve performance in a variety of potentially threatening situations (Sherman, 2013) by reducing defensiveness and negative affect (Crocker et al., 2008; Emanuel et al., 2018). Asking university students to briefly reflect on their personal values can generate enduring improvements in academic performance (Miyake et al., 2010). Self-affirmation of core values can also foster prosocial behavior (Schwartz, 2010), creativity at work (Jiang, 2018), and pro-environmental attitudes and behavior (Graham-Rowe et al., 2019). Values-based interventions can improve health care follow-through (Epton et al., 2015) and promote healthy lifestyles more effectively than alternative approaches (e.g., Anshel et al., 2010; Hardcastle et al., 2015).
Dimensions of ethnic identity as protective factors for substance use and sexual risk behaviors in African American college students
Published in Journal of American College Health, 2018
Angela M. Bowman Heads, Angel M. Glover, Linda G. Castillo, Shelley Blozis, Su Yeong Kim
Based on our results, African American emerging adults who seek counseling for substance use and sexual risk issues may benefit from interventions that promote the affirmation, belonging, and commitment aspects of ethnic identity. One potential intervention focus area is in self affirmation. Self-affirmation tasks require an individual to focus on and affirm sources of personal pride and have been shown to reduce feelings of social rejection and mistrust and reduce the negative effects of perceived discrimination and stereotype threat on academic performance in ethnic minority individuals.48–50 The most common way these interventions have been studied is through writing tasks in which individuals are asked to write about core personal values. Typically, participants are given a list of core values and instructed to choose one or a few that they identify as being most important to them and write an essay on why these values are important with specific examples of times when the value has been important.51 Although these types of interventions have thus far not targeted ethnic identity specifically, they have shown benefits for college students and ethnic minority adults and adolescents.51 Thus, it seems plausible that they may be adapted to target EI-ABC to improve the experience of African American college students in prevention interventions or to improve treatment engagement in this population.
Identity Development and Self-Esteem in Transgender Men: The Importance of Masculinity
Published in Journal of Homosexuality, 2023
Wind Goodfriend, Amber L. Garcia, Ann E. Hoover, Meara M. Habashi, Tay Hack, Angus Raymond
While other studies have examined the importance of gender validation or affirmation from others (Carrera et al., 2012; Norton & Herek, 2013; McLemore, 2014), we focused on internalized gender affirmation by measuring one’s post-transition feelings of masculinity. While this perspective adds to the current literature, future research is needed on the balance between affirmation from others and self-affirmation, and how these two constructs are similar and different from each other. If one’s community is not particularly affirming, for example, can self-affirmation serve as a buffer to maintain self-esteem? Is affirmation from others predicated on self-affirmation, or vice versa? Does access to medical care influence this affirmation, and if so, to what extent?