Knowledge Bank

While diagnostic negative feedback may be threatening, self-affirmation theory suggests that individuals may accept this feedback when reminded of core values because they are able to maintain feelings of worth. One potential mechanism of self-affirmation is high-level construal—thinking about events in terms of their core aspects. High-level construal reduces defensiveness when negative feedback is relevant, changeable, and diagnostic (Belding et al., In Press). We predict that if high-level construal drives self-affirmation, changeability and diagnosticity also moderate self-affirmation’s effectiveness. We used a 2 (self-affirmation: affirmed or control) x 2 (changeability: high or low) x 2 (diagnosticity: high or low) between subjects experiment to examine whether self-affirmation increases search for information on weaknesses (indicating receptiveness) over strengths (indicating defensiveness). Although the results failed to support our hypothesis, directions and implication for future research are discussed.