Greater benefit of self-affirmation for prevention-focused individuals prior to threatening health messages

Abstract

Objective: Individuals are often defensive toward health messages that suggest they are putting their health at risk because such messages threaten their self-competence and integrity. Although self-affirmation can facilitate prevention behaviors in response to health messages, effects are variable. We examined whether disease prevention focus might strengthen self-affirmation's effects in response to disease prevention messages, given that prevention-focused individuals are likeliest to be persuaded by those messages after self-affirmation attenuates defensiveness. Design:In Study 1, participants were self-affirmed before a message about sexually transmitted infections. In Studies 2 and 3, individuals were self-affirmed prior to a message about alcohol and cancer risk. Main Outcome Measures: Studies assessed intentions to use condoms, intentions to reduce alcohol, and willingness to drink alcohol in specific scenarios. Results: In Study 1, self-affirmation facilitated condom use intentions among those higher in prevention focus. In Studies 2-3, self-affirmation facilitated lower willingness to consume alcohol among those high in prevention focus. A meta-analysis across the three studies indicated that selfaffirmation improved intentions and willingness under high, but not low, prevention focus (d=0.20, p=.003). Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that health prevention-focus can strengthen self-affirmation's effects, thereby improving responsiveness to health communications about behaviors that increase disease risk.

Do Negative Self-Evaluative Emotions Enhance Healthier Food Choices? Exploring the Moderating Role of Self-Affirmation

“…Nevertheless, feeling bad about the unfavorable consequences may not always lead people to health behavior changes, and even though there is easily available knowledge about health hazards, recipients still often engage in harmful health behaviors [15]. This might be because individuals experiencing negative self-evaluative emotions often perceive that they have insufficient resources to handle the demands of their environment [16].…”

“…Specifically, affirming a significant aspect of oneself unrelated to the threatened domain may allow one to maintain or restore one's overall, positive self-concept and adopt a longer-term perspective [25], which results in more open-mindedness and more adaptive responses to messages. Therefore, preceding health messages with self-affirmation interventions may increase intentions to engage in risk-reducing behaviors [15]. Notably, as acceptance of a risk message should reflect recognition of both the general risk of the behavior described in the message and the personal implications of engaging in the behavior [26], previous research also suggested manipulating both self-affirmation and health risk information within one experimental design [22].…”

Evaluation of the reliability and validity of the health regulatory focus scale in Chinese samples

“…These outcomes solidify the credibility of the HRFS as a reliable instrument for assessing health regulatory focus. While the HRFS has garnered international application, extending beyond national borders to countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and China ( Catellani et al, 2021 ; Ferrer et al, 2021 ; Kim and Kim, 2022 ; Zhao et al, 2022 ; Nurek and Kostopoulou, 2023 ), it is noteworthy that the scale’s psychometric evaluations have hitherto been confined to the U.S. context.…”