Can Positive Affirmations Backfire?
A major goal of cognitive design is to create artifacts that put people in a particular mental state by using features and functions that enhance specific thoughts, feelings and cognitive processes. One way to do this is to include features in your design that trigger a positive-affirmation-effect that causes users reflect on or even subvocalize positive thoughts about themselves.
I read a recent article, Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others, that offers a caution when using this approach. Here is the abstract:
“Positive self-statements are widely believed to boost mood and self-esteem, yet their effectiveness has not been demonstrated. We examined the contrary prediction that positive self-statements can be ineffective or even harmful. A survey study confirmed that people often use positive self-statements and believe them to be effective. Two experiments showed that among participants with low self-esteem, those who repeated a positive self-statement (“I’m a lovable person”) or who focused on how that statement was true felt worse than those who did not repeat the statement or who focused on how it was both true and not true. Among participants with high self-esteem, those who repeated the statement or focused on how it was true felt better than those who did not, but to a limited degree. Repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people, but backfire for the very people who “need” them the most.”
Bottom line for cognitive designers – include self esteem in the psychographic profile of your customers.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Hmm…I can’t say that I disagree that a designer should consider all possible profile information, but there is more to the story re: self-esteem.
From the studies I have read, in the self-esteem “game,” the worst place for an individual to be is with low self-esteem, but trying to achieve higher self-esteem. This speaks to what you mention here—it is a fool’s game, because it is nearly impossible to build self-esteem successfully through self-affirmation or external compliments without reinforcing the “I’m falling short” mantra that comes with low self-esteem. When people are told, by themselves or anyone else, that they are great, but they truly feel they aren’t, it may lead to deeper malaise. Literature describing cognitive therapy often speaks to this phenomenon.
THAT SAID, having high self-esteem isn’t all it is cracked up to be, either. Based on my reading, studies show that high self-esteem often leads to an increase in risky behaviors. All the push to give kids a good sense of self-esteem in order to help them value themselves and make healthier choices has done just the opposite—kids with high self-esteem feel so confident in themselves, research has shown that they may be more likely to engage in unsafe sexual practices, for example, reporting higher incidences of sexually-transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies. In essence, cognitive designers must also keep in mind the bias that may exist for these individuals, a bias that makes them feel more impervious to harm.
So if high self-esteem is dangerous, what is best for our health? The answer to the self-esteem question can’t possibly be that we should all hope to have low self-esteem, but not to have low self-esteem while striving for high self-esteem, can it? That is what the literature might reveal to be the least risky option, but it certainly isn’t appealing.
Personally, I think the trick is to figure out ways to bolster individual SELF-WORTH and task-related SELF-EFFICACY. Esteem, as a construct, can be abandoned when worth and efficacy are central.