Self-affirmation Reduces Negative Emotional Experience Under Stressful Situation Of Nature

Self-affirmation theory is based on the premise that people have the need or motivation 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 people’s self-integrity has been threatened, they can restore self-integrity of the individuals through affirming the self, unrelated to threatening information, and cope with the threatening information in an opener and more balanced way. Much research abroad has been undertaken after the self-affirmation theory was first proposed, and fruitful results have been achieved. Research shows that self-affirmation can produce a series of relatively positive results. It has been demonstrated that self-affirmation have the stress-remission effect.However, there studies made under the experimental situations lack ecological validity and objective studies on psychological variables. At the present, discussions about the intermediary mechanism of self-affirmation are insufficient.Based on the literature, the present study raises the following three questions. The first question is whether self-affirmation can reduce negative-emotional experience under the natural stress situation. The second one is whether self-affirmation effects are the same for individuals of different levels of self-esteem. The third one is how long self-affirmation can be effective.Two experiments are designed to solve the three problems in the present study. Experiment one adopts stochastic experimental design of single-factor pretest and posttest.127second-year students from a certain county high school in Sichuan are randomly selected. Experimental Manipulations of self-Affirmation have been done3days ahead of exam. Subjects in the experimental group is required to choose one which are the most important to them from a list of13values and write down the main reason. Subjects in the control group are required to choose one which are the least important to them and write down why it may be important to others. Experiment two adopts two-factor stochastic experimental design which makes the independent variables (positive condition) be three levels by adding one level to the independent variables of experimental one. In other words, experimental manipulations of self-affirmation are done14days and then3days ahead of exam, and no self-affirmation experiment is done. The self-esteem levels are separated into high, middle and low ones. The following three conclusions could be drawn through the above two experiments:1) Self-affirmation can reduce subjects’ negative-emotional experience under the natural stress situation. Negative-emotional experience of subjects in the experimental group with self-affirmation experiment is obviously lower than those in the control group without self-affirmation experiment.2) Self-affirmation can be effective for a long time.3) Self-esteem exerts an influence on self-affirmation effect. Self-affirmation has a better effect on subjects of high self-esteem than on those of low self-esteem.