Beneficial effects of self-affirmation on motivation and performance reduced in students hungry for others’ approval |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Tsing Hua University, 101, Sec. 2, Kuang Fu Road, Hsinchu City 30013, Taiwan, Republic of China;2. Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, No. 43, Sec. 4, Keelung Road, Da''an Dist., Taipei City 10617, Taiwan, Republic of China |
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| Abstract: | Researchers have suggested that the self-affirmation intervention may motivate students to approach a challenging task and improve their performance. However, we posited that self-affirmation may not be beneficial for students whose self-esteem is based more on others’ approval (i.e., having high others’ approval contingencies of self-worth; OACSW). This is because the main motive for undertaking a challenging task among high OACSW students may be to obtain others’ approval and increase self-esteem. Being self-affirmed may increase high OACSW students’ sense of self-integrity, satisfying this motive, and thus cause them to perceive a lower value in undertaking the task. Consequently, high OACSW students would be less inclined to undertake the task and would not perform more favorably on it after being self-affirmed. In support of this hypothesis, the results of Experiment 1 (value affirmation) and Experiment 2 (attribute affirmation) showed that for high school students who did not receive self-affirmation, OACSW tended to be positively associated with their tendencies to confront a challenging task and their performance. However, for self-affirmed participants, the positive relationships between OACSW and both their tendencies to confront the task and performance flattened, and even went negative, mainly through a reduction of perceived value in confronting the task. Potential underlying mechanisms and implications are discussed. |
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| Keywords: | Self-affirmation Attribute affirmation Value affirmation Others’ approval contingencies of self-worth Motivation |
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