Jul 03 2009
The Skeptics’ Daily Affirmation
Avoid daily affirmations.
One of my favorite SNL skits was Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley, played by Minnesota’s new junior senator. The humor of the skit, as is often the case, was in the fact that it was just a slight exaggeration of reality.
Smalley was a self-help guru whose schtick was the daily affirmation – psychotherapy through simple-minded positive self statements. His catch phrase was, “Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!”He was a caricature of every insipid simple-minded pop psychologist peddling easy answers to people with problems for the entertainment of others.
Smalley was also an indictment of the self-help industry, which is all about substituting easy gimicks for real problem solving. For a good overview, listen to our interview with Steve Salerno, author of SHAM – How the self-help movement made America helpless.
Psychologist Richard Wiseman’s latest book, 59 Seconds, also contains a harsh criticism of the self-help industry, focusing on the fact that it is not evidence-based. Mainly, self-help gurus just make stuff up. Meanwhile, there is a vast literature of psychological research that contains actually useful information that offers practical knowledge. For example, telling children that they have done a good job turns out to be a bad idea. This just makes them anxious about their future performance and fearful of failure. However, if you praise them for working hard they will encourage them to work hard the next time – because they have absolute control over how hard they work, but not the final outcome. This is one of those notions that seems counter-intuitive at first, but them makes complete sense once it is explained.
The same, it turns out, is true of daily affirmations. A recent study published in Psychological Science finds that for people with low self esteem saying positive self-affirmations actually lowered their self-esteem. For people with high self-esteem at baseline, affirmations has only a slightly positive effect. Seem counter-intuitive at first, but researchers Wood, Lee, and Perunovic believe that for people with low self-esteem the self-affirmation just makes them consider how untrue the contrived statement is, lowering their self-esteem.
They liken this to excessive praise. If a parent tells a child that that they are the most wonderful child in the world, they are likely to just role their eyes. Unrealistic praise is not as effective as more targeted and realistic praise.
Other research shows that self-affirmation can be counterproductive in that it encourages confirmation bias in dismissing negative information about ourselves – information threatening to our self-esteem. In other words, people recently exposed to affirming statements were more likely to rationalize away information that potentially had negative implications for their self-esteem. The authors conclude: “By ameliorating the threat, self-affirmations can elicit less effective reasoning strategies.”
Of course, the story about self-affirmation is much more complicated than I have covered so far, and the information is not all bad. There is evidence that affirming statements may promote good behaviors, like more healthy eating habits. Self-affirmation also seems to make people less defensive and more open to health information, such as the dangers of smoking. However, at the same time (except for the study on eating above) most of the evidence shows that there is no positive effect on actual behavior.
Other affirmation may make people more open to compromise. This one makes sense – if you butter people up (but don’t overdo it) they will be less defensive and more open to negotiation.
Like most psychological questions, the effects of self-affirmation are complex and not completely understood. It seems that they have a negative effect on people with low self-esteem. For people with average to high self-esteem, there is a slightly positive effect which can make people less defensive and more open, but also more likely to use confirmation bias to dismiss esteem-threatening information. And, the effects of self-affirmation on actual behavior seems debatable.
But don’t confuse self-help gurus with the facts. It’s difficult to market complexity and uncertainty, so the self-help industry takes the Stuart Smalley approach.
I prefer the evidence-based approach, and the interesting thing is that there is a wealth of useful evidence in the psychological literature. The problem is that there is a disconnect between this information and the public, and the self-help industry is filling the gulf with misinformation. That is why I applaud the efforts of Richard Wiseman and others to connect actual research evidence to the public in easy-to-digest nuggets.
This is generally the goal of the skeptical movement – to connect the public with actual science rather than the “cheap imitation.” And we are succeeding – because we are good enough, we are smart enough, and doggonit people like us.
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22 Responses to “The Skeptics’ Daily Affirmation”
I am generally confused by many of these psychological things that we talk about, like self-esteem. I know, in general, what it is and what it is supposed to be, but scientifically they are generally on thin ice.
You, and almost everyone else, discuss self-esteem as if it as an actual thing that we have, instead of a general description of our behavior. We assume that a set of behaviors are a sign of low self-esteem, then because we see those behavior we know they have low self-esteem, and then we go about trying to fix their low self-esteem. We are trying to fix something that only exists as a description.
This sort of thinking tends to apply to quite a bit in psychology, that this construct that we use to talk about some phenomenon actually exists. Self-help gurus, with a love of pop psychology prey upon it, and we get no where.
Who cares about low self-esteem? Fix the behaviors that everyone point to when they think of low self-esteem. If someone won’t start new projects, what ever they may be, because they “know” they will fail. Trying to fix their non-existent self-esteem will not help them, just working on getting the person to start new projects regardless of anything else is all you need to do.
Can we tell the difference between fake psychological science and real psychological science? Is it as easy a recognizing the difference between a real pair of Nikes and an imitation? Does the real stuff have better methodology or more monies directed its way?
Thanks for the link to the Bobbit skit. I had a forensic patient who tried to slice his own organ off when the police caught him in an illegal act. Its a cheap way to avoid prison and take up space at the hospital. His daily affirmation was he was crazy and not guilty of anything.
Xalx – you are correct, but are missing a key point. Psychological research that studies things like “self-esteem” need to have an operational definition of what that is, which can include self-report of mood and attitudes, but also behaviors. Also, validated concepts and measures thereof are predictive of objective outcomes, otherwise they are not considered to have any useful meaning.
So in practice what you are saying is already taken into consideration by how psychologists define things like “self-esteem”, at least ideally.
So what you need to ask is – how is “self-esteem” being measured, and is self-esteem, as measured, predictive of any particular outcome. If you improve your measure of self-esteem and that correlates with the desired outcome, such as starting new projects, then the concept and measure are thought to be useful and meaningful.
But that is always a good question to ask about any new concept raised in psychology – and is often exactly what is lacking in pop psychology – validation of their concepts and measures.
Children and others can sense the difference between sincere appreciation of their efforts and manipulation, even though praise is often a combination of both. Their level of self regard will cause them to react accordingly to whatever portion of hypocrisy they detect (or are predisposed to look for).
And nothing, it seems, is less sincere or more hypocritical than a self help guru.
And HHC, you seem to analyze all behavior as some sort of a cheap trick to get over on you. Did it ever occur to you that the patient might actually be crazy?
Xalxuffasch-”You, and almost everyone else, discuss self-esteem as if it as an actual thing that we have, instead of a general description of our behavior.” Not so much a “thing” as it is confidence in one’s self acquired by a history of personal success in life.
“Trying to fix their non-existent self-esteem will not help them…” I would argue that the second half of this statement : “just working on getting the person to start new projects regardless of anything else is all you need to do” IS in fact trying to fix their self-esteem by helping a person to achieve a personal success. I think that just talking to a person, trying to convince them of their worth is not as useful as getting them to learn and succeed by doing. People do have different tolerances for failure though, so some will more easily quit trying when faced with an early failure, so that is why praise for effort instead of success is more important.
Besides in the evolutionary sense the penis more often selected for fitness is shorter than the ones that were too long.
It is much better to have someone accomplish something than to have them make ‘positive’ self statements.
This relates to school- teach the kid to add and subtract- these are skills that the person can know they have without any affirmation. Much better for the kid.
In psychology they would measure “stress” in rats. You can’t ask a rat “how stressed are you? Are you more stressed living with 800 other rats in that little cage? Or less stressed living with only 2 rats?” Psychology operationally defines stress as “the number of ulcers formed”. If a rat forms more ulcers under x condition, then by the operational definition the rat is more stressed. One might question the assumption that ulcers are a reasonable measure of stress. Given ulcers can be caused by bacteria, is this a measure of stress?
I think that people make the unwarranted assumption that the “daily affirmation” is what “causes” the long term feelings. It is much more likely that the feelings come first, and then the “daily affirmation” is a rationalization the brain generates to explain and justify the feelings.
I think this is why some types of daily affirmations are effective. Their purpose is to rationalize feelings the individual already has, and (my hypothesis) provide the start at problem solving to get the individual in a state where more desirable feelings will happen. When the rationalizations are about process, and about things within the individual’s control, then they can form the foundation of changes in behavior that will result in better outcomes.
I suspect that when affirmations have no content, or are factually untrue, then they will be ineffective, and will get one into an ineffective rut. Blaming adverse circumstances on supernatural events is one of them.
If you feel guilty and use those guilty feelings to change your behavior in the future so that you don’t do things you will feel guilty about, that is using the feelings to change your behavior. If you feel guilty and attribute those feelings to “sin” which can only be resolved by a religious ceremony, you have turned over your life to those who control the religious ceremonies.
I think this is how the “secret” works. If all you do is think about what you want, it will never happen, but if you start thinking about how you can accomplish what you want, then you might be successful. All success has to happen via a path. Chance favors the prepared mind (quote from Pasteur). If you have prepared yourself to do what is necessary to be successful (i.e. learn the background), then when something unexpected happens you are able to learn from it and capitalize on it.
sonic says, teach the kid to add and subtract, but I say unto all children, go fourth and multiply.
Lorena Bobbit has formed a domestic violence organization, Red Wagon. Don’t expect real psychological assistance from her group. Unless, of course, you feel driven by the media frenzy to seek out perpetrators of domestic violence. Mrs. Bobbit’s anger drove her to mutilate her man and more recently strike her mother. She was said to be not guilty of the mutilation by temporary insanity, a legal fiction. Actually, this action has been reported in South American rituals to end a marriage. Her continued arousal and anger toward her roomate, currently her mother, reveals her aggression is a sustained pattern of living.
HHC has given us her daily disaffirmation. Actually ritualistic disinformation common to the Southern Appalachians.
Lets see ArtfulD, on this 4th of July, you’ve managed in just a few short words to insult Southerners and residents of Appalachia which runs from Pennsylvania all the way to northern Georgia by calling them liars, not to mention me. While I don’t care what you call me, insulting a good chunk of the country on Independence Day strikes me as being rather unpatriotic. Have a nice weekend.
HHC,
Disaffirmation is repudiation, not lying, unless of course you were lying about the South Americans. Disinformation is not necessarily lying either – in Southern Appalachia it’s more like your personal brand of ignorance.
South Americans have penis lopping rituals to end a marriage? Give me a break.
By the way, I don’t see the connection between insults and patriotism, unless perhaps you feel it’s patriotic to be ignorant. Or it’s ignorant to be patriotic?
Or perhaps you didn’t realize that the Bobbit incident happened in Manassas, Virginia, right by the Applachian Trail. So who’s insulting who in that area, I wonder?
That’s great, but where is this science of parenting? Or self-help? You can find evocative, moving books by the cartload filled with pseudo-scientific, anecdotal, or just totally made-up “wisdom” on these subjects, but I don’t see any scientific books, let alone good ones. There is a great need for such works, I think.
I’m thinking of works that won’t contain answers so much as experimental results and discussions, actual popular-science works that treat the reader like an intelligent adult, not an imbecile that needs to be forced-fed dogmatic “conclusions” without understanding their origins and, therefore, their limits of applicability.
If there are such books, I haven’t seen them. I would appreciate a heads-up on that…
There’s nothing more “scientific” in my view than the essentially philosophical wisdom contained in the classic literature that has stood the test of time, much of which can be accessed freely at sites such as this:
http://www.literature.org/authors/
Start here perhaps: http://www.literature.org/authors/voltaire/candide/
Or here:
http://www.literature.org/authors/aesop/
Or just end it here:
http://www.literature.org/authors/dostoevsky-fyodor/crime-and-punishment/
http://www.literature.org/authors/
Good article, Steve. I’m reading “59 Seconds” at the moment, and whilst there isn’t much in there that I didn’t already know (having recently finished my Psychology degree with Honours in the First Class, I thangyew
), the way that Richard Wiseman has distilled and presented the information is superb. I’d happily recommend it to anyone.
I know this is old, but the thing I would like to see tested with these babies is what exactly they are recognizing. It’s pretty clear from watching the commercials that the babies are recognizing the shape of the word.
That is a valid part of teaching reading. It’s one of the things that gets done in whole language reading, the shape of the word is outlined. But it’s only part of it.
I would test this by putting up a word of exactly the same shape, or random symbols that make the same shape as a word.