Combining Self-Affirmation and Implementation Intentions: Evidence of Detrimental Effects on Behavioral Outcomes
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Combining Self-Affirmation and Implementation Intentions: Evidence of Detrimental Effects on Behavioral Outcomes Donna C. Jessop, Ph.D & Paul Sparks, Ph.D & Nicola Buckland, BSc & Peter R. Harris, Ph.D & Sue Churchill, Ph.D
# The Society of Behavioral Medicine 2013
Abstract Background There is limited evidence that self-affirmation manipulations can promote health behavior change. Purpose The purpose of this study was to explore whether the efficacy of a self-affirmation manipulation at promoting exercise could be enhanced by an implementation intention intervention. Methods Participants (Study 1N =120, Study 2N =116) were allocated to one of four conditions resulting from the two (self-affirmation manipulation: no affirmation, affirmation) by two (implementation intention manipulation: no implementation intention, implementation intention) experimental design. Exercise behavior was assessed 1 week postintervention. Results Contrary to prediction, those participants receiving both manipulations were significantly less likely to increase the amount they exercised compared to those receiving only the self-affirmation manipulation. Conclusion Incorporating an implementation intention manipulation alongside a self-affirmation manipulation had a detrimental effect on exercise behavior; participants receiving both manipulations exercised significantly less in the week following the intervention.
Keywords . Self-affirmation . Implementation intentions . Health-risk information . Exercise
D. C. Jessop (*) : P. Sparks : N. Buckland : P. R. Harris School of Psychology, Pevensey 1, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QH, UK e-mail: [email protected] S. Churchill Department of Psychology and Counselling, University of Chichester, Chichester, PO19 6PE, UK
A major challenge facing health promoters is the tendency for people to process personally relevant health-risk information defensively [1–3]. Indeed, people at whom health promotion messages are directed (e.g., those who engage in a particular health-detrimental behavior) have been shown to be the most likely to derogate the message [1] and the least likely to be persuaded by it [2].
Self-affirmation theory Such defensive processing can be explained from the perspective of self-affirmation theory [4]. According to selfaffirmation theory, people are continually motivated to protect their self-integrity, where the latter has been described as the belief that the self is “adaptively and morally adequate, that is, competent, good, coherent, unitary, stable, capable of free choice, capable of controlling important outcomes…” (4, p. 262). Information detailing the health-detrimental consequences of a person's chosen behaviors may present a threat to self-integrity, insofar as such information questions the extent to which (s)he can be considered as “competent” and “capable of controlling important outcomes”, and hence as someone who would not deliberately engage in behavior that is harmful to the self. Consequently, the desire to defend selfinte
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