An Experimental Research About Self-affirmation Reducing The Defensive Responses

Self-affirmation theory is proposed with the premise that people are motivated to maintain the integrity of the self. Self-integrity can be defined as the sense that, on the whole, one is a good and appropriate person. When this image of self-integrity is threatened, people can restore the self-worth by affirmation of alternative sources of self-integrity, which can enable people to deal with threatening events and information without resorting to defensive biases, but in a more open and even-handed manner.There are many researches about self-affirmation in the west, and have been extended to group-affirmation. Both self-and group-serving biases were eliminated among those who completed an affirmation manipulation, and the effect of group-affirmation is better than self-affirmation. But all of them are based in western culture. How about the eastern person, who emphasize the self-abasement? On the basic of literature review of self-affirmation, group-affirmation, the relation between culture and self, three problems that intended to resolve in the present research were put forward. (1)Whether participants who completed self-affirmation or group-affirmation, will reduce the defensive bias with threatened group identification information? (2)Whether patriots proved far more defensive bias than did unpatriots, and will eliminate the defensive bias by self-affirmation or group-affirmation? (3) If the self-affirmation effect exist in Chinese people, for the group threatened information, self-affirmation or group-affirmation is better?Therefore,2 experiments were designed. The main aim of experiment 1 was to explore whether there are self-or group-affirmation effect on Chinese university students, which one is better. Random assigned 100 students to self-affirmation condition, group-affirmation condition, and control condition. After finishing the patriotic measure, read an article about foreign media criticism on Chinese 2008 Olympic Games. Then asked the participants in the self-or group-affirmation conditions to evaluate 13 values, selected the most important value, and gave the reasons and examples, the control condition did nothing. Finally, asked subjects to answer the 8 questions about the article as the dependent variable measure. Experiment 2 tried to duplicate the results of experiment 1. Random assigned 156 students to self-affirmation condition, group-affirmation condition, and control condition. After finishing the patriotic measure, read an article about foreign media criticism on Chinese 2008 Olympic Games. Then asked the participants in the self-or group-affirmation conditions to write the most excellence or the most proud character of themselves or Chinese people, and gave the reasons and examples, the control condition wrote the food they ate in the past 48 hours. Finally, asked subjects to answer the 8 questions about the article as the dependent variable measure.By statistical analysis, the main findings of the present research are as follows:(1)Chinese people maybe have the self-affirmation effect too. The participants who finished self-affirmation or group-affirmation, reduced the defensive responds to foreign media criticism on 2008 Olympic Games.(2) On the whole, the effect of self-affirmation is better than group-affirmation.(3) Affirmed the irrelevant resources with the threatened domain will eliminate the defensive bias, however, the relevant affirmation will enhance the bias.