Why does writing about important values reduce defensiveness? Self-affirmation and the role of positive other-directed feelings.

Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. jcrocker@umich.edu

Previous research has repeatedly shown that writing about an important value, compared with writing about an unimportant value, reduces defensiveness in response to self-threatening information, but has not identified why. Study 1 showed that participants who wrote about an important value reported more positive other-directed feelings, such as love and connection, than participants who wrote about an unimportant value. Study 2 replicated this effect, and showed that loving and connected feelings, but not positive or negative self-directed feelings, completely accounted for the effect of a values-affirmation manipulation on smokers' acceptance of information indicating that smoking harms health. These studies, in concert with previous research, suggest that values affirmation reduces defensiveness via self-transcendence, rather than self-integrity (i.e., self-worth or self-images).

PMID: 18727791 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]