The Psychology of Self‐defense: Self‐Affirmation Theory

By D. Sherman, Geoffrey L. Cohen. 2006

1,515 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/827df9b81834b6562a239116965d06837750ab6f

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Citations in the corpus

Interactions do not only tell us when, but can also tell us how: Testing process hypotheses by interaction (2011, positive): “Other manipulations that follow the logic of TPIS include self-affirmation (e.g., Aronson, Cohen, & Nail, 1999; Sherman & Cohen, 2006), control (Warburton, Williams, & Cairns, 2006), need for uniqueness (Imhoff & Erb, 2009), anticipated anxiety (Greenberg, Martens, Jonas, Eisenstadt, Pyszczynski, &…”
Daily stress and the benefits of mindfulness: Examining the daily and longitudinal relations between present-moment awareness and stress responses (2016, background): “Perceptions of threat have been consistently shown to predict more avoidant and defensive responding to stressful events (Park, Armeli, & Tennen, 2004; Sherman & Cohen, 2006; Stowell, Kiecolt-Glaser, & Glaser, 2001).”
Empathy: a motivated account. (2014, background): “To the extent that this is the case, consistency with one’s values should be experienced as affectively fulfilling (Higgins, 1987; Sherman & Cohen, 2006) and can be a source of meaning even when it is painful (Frankl, 1963/1985).”
Reconciling self-protection with self-improvement: Self-affirmation theory. (2011, background): “As a result, as Sherman and Cohen (2006) suggested: When global perceptions of self-integrity are affirmed, otherwise threatening events or information lose their self-threatening capacity because the individual can view them within a broader, larger view of the self.”
Social-Psychological Interventions for Intergroup Reconciliation: An Emotion Regulation Perspective (2016, background): “These studies add to the evidence that bolstering individuals’ feelings of global self-integrity (Sherman & Cohen, 2006; Steele, 1988) can reduce their inclination and need to respond defensively to threatening information.”
It's not easy being green: : the role of self-evaluations in explaining support of environmental issues (2014, background): “Notably, a tenet of self-affirmation theory (Sherman & Cohen, 2006; Steele, 1988) is that when individuals perceive a threat to their sense of self (such as a self-doubt), which then negatively influences their behavior, they can overcome this threat by affirming the self by feeling a sense of…”
Elevation Puts Moral Values Into Action (2012, background): “Indeed, a central consideration of selfaffirmation theory is that people want to protect the integrity of their concept of self (Sherman & Cohen, 2006).”
Falling from great (and not-so-great) heights: how initial status position influences performance after status loss (2014, background): “…(Crocker & Park, 2004; Sedikides, 2012), and they can do this directly—for instance, by constructing justifications or placing blame— or indirectly, by affirming their sense of self in a domain unrelated to the source of selfthreat (Sherman & Cohen, 2006; Sherman & Hartson , 2011; Steele, 1988).”
The promise and peril of self-affirmation in de-escalation of commitment (2008, background): “To maintain perceptions of overall worth in the face of threat, people can either: (a) directly attempt to discredit or counteract threatening information or (b) indirectly emphasize alternative sources of self-worth that are not currently being threatened ( Sherman & Cohen, 2006 ).”
Meritocracy, Self-Concerns, and Whites' Denial of Racial Inequity (2012, background): “Experimentally induced threats to the self have been shown to increase self-defensive motivation (Campbell & Sedikides, 1999), while affirming the self has been shown to decrease it (Fein & Spencer, 1997; Sherman & Cohen, 2006; Steele, 1988).”
A Meta-analysis of the Longitudinal Relationship Between Academic Self-Concept and Academic Achievement (2021, background): “In addition, it has been suggested that students who have a positive view of themselves might strive to align their behavior and performance with their self-image (Sherman, 2013; Sherman & Cohen, 2006).”
Offensive Defensiveness: Toward an Integrative Neuroscience of Compensatory Zeal After Mortality Salience, Personal Uncertainty, and Other Poignant Self-Threats (2006, background): “The metaphor is of a resource reservoir that threats detract from and affirmations replenish (Sherman & Cohen, 2006).”
The Politically Motivated Reasoning Paradigm, Part 1: What Politically Motivated Reasoning Is and How to Measure It (2016, background): “Such behavior protects their connection to others with whom they share communal ties (Sherman & Cohen, 2006).”
Developing and Testing a Self-affirmation Manipulation (2009, methodology): “This preference for congenial information has been shown for beliefs of many kinds (Sherman & Cohen, 2006 ).”
Pathways for Positive Identity Construction at Work: Four Types of Positive Identity and the Building of Social Resources (2010, background): “As a result, individuals who have high regard for a particular identity in one domain respond more openly and less defensively to identity-threatening situations in another (see Sherman & Cohen, 2006, for a review).”