PROSPECT 3 self affirmation provide a broader perspective on self threat

Procedure. When signing up for the study (at least 24 hr before the lab component), participants
completed a measure of dispositional self-esteem, modified from Rosenberg (1965). This served
as a broad self-assessment.
Once participants arrived at the lab, those assigned to the affirmation condition completed a
values-based affirmation. Participants ranked eight values or skills (e.g., adventure in life,
financial success).2 Participants then took 3 min to write about why their most valued domain was
meaningful in their own life.3 We positioned the self-affirmation manipulation prior to the test so
that it would not serve as a distraction in between the threat and the final measures, a worry
some-times expressed when self-affirmations are positioned later (Steele, 1988).
Next, all participants were told that they would complete a test that measured integrative
orientation ability, supposedly a test of creative thinking skills that are particularly diagnostic of
success in professional careers. The test was a modification of the Remote Associates Test
(Mednick, 1962) used in previous research to induce threat (Critcher, Dunning, & Armor, 2010).
Participants received 15 word triads. For each triad, participants had to generate a fourth word
that connected to each of the provided words. For example, one triad read STALKTRAINER
KING.4
After the remote associates test, participants completed 14 items measuring their feelings of
self-worth, asking them how well each statement characterizes how you feel about yourself right
now. A principal components analysis with varimax rotation found that items loaded on two
orthogonal factors. To assess participants views of their own abilities specific to the tested
domain, participants indicated their agreement that I feel I am pretty good at tests like the one I
took today, on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 9 (extremely). This served as a narrow selfassessment.

PROSPECT 2 self affirmation improves problem solving under stress

Procedure
Participantscompleted an experiment ostensibly about intelligence and performance.
Participants were informed that a trained evaluator would administer the performance task.
Participants were randomly assigned either to the self-affirmation or control condition. In both
cases, they rated 11 values (i.e., art, business, friends/family) in order of personal importance.
Next, they wrote about their first ranked value and why it was important to them (selfaffirmation condition) or their ninth ranked value and why it might be important to others
(control condition) [12]. Following the self-affirmation writing task, as a manipulation check,
participants were asked to respond to two items assessing how important the value they wrote
about was, using a 6-point response scale (1 = Strongly Disagree to 6= Strongly Agree). Items
were, This value has influenced my life and This value is an important part of who I am
(study a = .96). Participants then completed a state mood adjective checklist assessing state
positive mood (5 items: proud, content, joyful, love, and grateful; study a = .84) and state negative
mood (3 items: sad, angry, scared; study a = .65) (PANAS-X; [22,23]).
144 RAT items have been normed for difficulty [17], and pilot testing indicated that our
undergraduate sample population can solve all easy RAT items. We thus selected 30 challenging
RAT items ranging in difficulty from moderately to extremely difficult. For each RAT item,
participants saw three words on a computer screen (e.g., flake, mobile, cone) and were asked to
generate a fourth word (e.g., snow) that when combined with each of the three stimulus words
results in a common word pair used in everyday English language. They were given 12 seconds to
provide an answer verbally. The evaluator provided veridical verbal performance feedback
(incorrect, correct) after each response and recorded each response. In order to create
performance pressure, the evaluator provided evaluative feedback three times during the 30 RAT
trials (I need you to try harder).
After completing the performance task, the evaluator left the room and the experimenter reentered and indicated that the participant was to rest quietly (5 minute recovery period).
Participants then completed individual difference measures, including the 10-item Perceived
Stress Scale [26] to assess perceived stress over the last month (all items were summed to form a
composite index of chronic stress, study a = .87). To reduce potential confounding effects, we
administered these measures at the end of the experimental session because previous studies
indicate that completing individual difference measures at the beginning of an experimental
session may act as an affirmation manipulation (i.e., they have carry-over effects) [27]. After
completing individual difference measures, participants were debriefed, compensated, and
excused.

PROSPECT 1 the effect of self-affirmation in nonthreatening persuasion domains: timing

affects the process

EXPERIMENT 1
Experiment 1 was designed to examine whether self-affirmation, when it precedes a
message, can influence attitude change by affecting the degree of information processing.
The extent to which participants processed information was assessed by varying the quality
of the arguments contained within the message and by measuring the impact of these
arguments on attitudes. When people are differentially affected by strong and weak
persuasive messages, it suggests that they have carefully attended to and thought about the
merits of the information (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). In this
experiment, relative to a control group, we expected affirmed participants to think less
about the message content. This should result in smaller differences in the attitudes of selfaffirmed participants (relative to no-affirmation control participants) to the strong versus
weak proposal.
Method
Participants and Design
Students were randomly assigned to the cells of a 2 (self-affirmation: affirmation vs. no
affirmation) 2 (argument quality: strong vs. weak) between participants factorial design.
Procedure
Participants were told that they were going to participate in two different research
projects. The first study was described as a project about values and their influ ence on
daily life situations (self-affirmation manipulation). After selecting a series of values from
Grimm and colleagues Individualism-Collectivism Scale (ICS; Grimm, Church, Katigbak, &
Reyes, 1999), half of the participants listed experiences related to their most important
values (affirmation condition) or their least important values (no affirmation condition).
The second part of the experiment was presented as a research study for a new cell phone
marketing campaign, and participants were asked to evaluate the advertisement.
Participants received a strong or weak version of a message in favor of a new cell phone
and were then asked to report their attitudes toward the cell phone.
with the most important of the selected values. In contrast, people in the no-self-affirmation
condition had to select the 3 least important values from the ICS and write about three
situations associated with their least important value. Two judges coded the content of
those situations associated with the values. As anticipated, participants wrote about
instances in which they acted consistent with the values listed. 2
Argument quality. Participants were exposed to a message containing information about a
new cell phone. The advertisement contained either strong or weak arguments in favor of

the new product. This manipulation was designed to assess the extent to which people were
care-fully examining the content of the message (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The arguments
selected have been used successfully in previous research and produce the appropriate
pattern of thoughts (Briol et al., 2004). That is, the strong arguments elicited mostly
favorable thoughts and the weak arguments elicited mostly unfavorable thoughts when
people were instructed to think carefully about them. The gist of some of the strong
arguments in favor of the new cell phone stated that Ginex is water-proof, shock-resistant,
and extremely low in battery consumption and that it includes a calendar, an alarm, and a
video recorder. The gist of some of the weak arguments stated that Ginex has a clock, is
able to convert international currencies with a sophisticated formula, and has only a 2-digit
password. In the weak message, it was also noted that Ginex was investing a great deal of
money in an ad campaign, which meant it would be popular soon and thus a good choice. 3
Dependent Variables
Manipulation check. To determine whether the self-affirmation manipulation was
perceived as personally important, all participants had to rate the personal importance of
the three selected values on a single scale ranging from 1 (not important) to 7 (most
important). Two participants did not complete this measure so the degrees of freedom will
vary in the analyses below.
Attitudes. To assess attitudes toward the Ginex cell phone, participants indicated their
assessment of the phone using a series of 9-point semantic differential scales. These scales
were anchored at badgood, unattractiveattractive, not recommendedrecommended, and
uselessuseful.