Self-Affirmation Theory

Background and History

[Page 670]In the late 19th century, the psychologist William James introduced the notion of the social self. This notion implied that people care about the way others see them and that their self-worth is based partly on their perceptions of the way others perceive them. As a consequence, an important source of identity and self-integrity involves people's social or group identities and their social roles and relationships with others. How people cope with threats to these social bases of self-worth is a question of historical and contemporary concern in psychology, and one of the central issues addressed by major social psychological theories such as social identity theory.

When an important aspect of the self, such as a social identity, is threatened, people will engage in various adaptations to maintain self-integrity. Some of these adaptations can be termed defensive in that they involve denying or distorting the threatening information. Such adaptations may involve rationalizations and even distortions of reality, and can be thus considered defensive in nature. Self-affirmation theory addresses the way people cope with threats to the selfboth personal threats, such as those that result from a lack of control or health risk information, and threats to a group or a social identity, such as identification with a sports team, a country, an organization, or a gender or racial group. These identities can constitute important bases of self-worth. Consequently, people will defend against threats to these collective aspects of the self much as they defend against threats to individual or personal aspects of the self.

For example, information that is antagonistic to one's political beliefs may be viewed with skepticism whereas information supporting one's political beliefs may be accepted with little scrutiny. Similarly, when people feel that they could be judged negatively on the basis of a stereotype about their group, they may feel psychologically threatened and as a consequence engage in various adaptations, including avoiding or dis-identifying from the domain in which they feel negatively judged. Positive events that happen to one's group may be thought of as caused by the group itself whereas negative events may be attributed to external factors. Such adaptations can help an individual maintain self-integrity by reducing the potential threat to a valued identity.

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