Self-affirmation is a process in which an individual focuses on their strengths. By acknowledging and focusing on strengths the individual is more likely to accept mistakes and see more room for improvement because he/she is able to preserve his/her self-worth.
Lisa Legault of Clarkson University and her colleagues Michael Inzlicht of the University of Toronto Scarborough and Timour Al-Khindi of John Hopkins University arrange many theories. They suggest that because self-affirmation has been presented to make us more accessible to threats and criticism, it should make us more aware and emotionally accept ant to the mistakes we make.
The experimenters added another theory that these effects on attention and emotion could be determined in the form of a well known brain response called error-related negativity, or ERN. The ERN is a marked wave of electrical activity in the brain that happens within 100ms of making a bad job on a task.
To test their assumption, the analysts randomly selected 38 undergraduates to either a self-affirmation or a non-affirmation condition. In the self-affirmation condition, participants were asked to rank six values aesthetic, social, political, religious, economic and theoretical values - from most to least important.They had five minutes to write about why their highest-ranked value was exceptional to them. In the non-affirmation condition participants also ranked the six values, but they then wrote why their highest -ranked value was not so important to them.
After ranking the values, the participants engaged a test of self-control-- the "go/no-go task in which they were told to press a button when the letter M appears on the screen ( the " go" stimulus) when the letter W (the "no-go" stimulus) appeared, they were not to press the button. If they were to press the button they were given a negative response "Wrong"! whenever they made that mistake.While they were completing the go/no-go task,the participants brain activity was recorded through (EEG).
Results show that participants in the self-affirmation condition had fewer mistakes of commission pressing the button when they were not supposed to -- than did those who were in the non-affirmation condition.
The participants brain activity showed a very significant story. While the self-affirmation and non affirmation groups showed similar brain activity when they answered right, self-affirmed participants presented a much higher ERN when they made a mistake.The analysts figure that the participants who were self-affirmed were more accepting to the errors which allowed them to improved their mistakes.
These studies are important because they recommend one of the first ways in which the brain intervenes on the effects of self-affirmation. This article can be useful for those interested in self-affirmation as an intervention tactic in academic and social programming might be intrigue to know that the strategy produces measurable neurophysiologial effects.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121024150800.htm
It is an interesting choice that the researchers decided to have the control group rank the values and then write why their highest ranked was not important to them, instead of not giving them the value task at all. I wonder if this had a greater effect on the difference in ERN than the self-affirmation priming. To me it seems that the control group was primed in a negative way by having to write why their highest ranked value wasn't important to them instead of just not being primed to self-affirm. Its possible that the control group had a lower ERN because they were primed to discount their answers. I think to find better support for whether self-affirmation has an effect on performance the control group's first activity should be neutral in terms of self-affirmation, so that they are not primed in either direction.
ReplyDeleteIt is very uplifting to understand why, although difficult at times, it is best to maintain a self-affirming attitude rather than a self-defeating one. With the affirmed self more willing to accept human err, one's that maintain this disposition believe they have more power to correct their mistakes, a self-fulfilling prophecy of positive thinking! The Error Related Negativity's ability to be distinguished at 100ms is extraordinary fast in real time, suggesting that emotional feedback can be emitted very quickly and shows it's automatic qualities.I wonder if this theory although applies to self-affirmation, may correlate with affirmation and reassurance one may get externally from one's friends, family, and society.
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