Positive affirmations: pros, cons and how to use them well

Positive affirmations: pros, cons and how to use them well

Introduction

"I am capable." "I deserve the best." "Every day I'm getting better." Positive affirmations fill posters, apps and self-help videos, and they are usually presented as an easy way to change how you see yourself. The promise is appealing: repeating a phrase would be enough to reprogram your mind.

Research tells a more interesting and less simple story. Some ways of affirming yourself have measurable effects; others do nothing, and a few can worsen the mood of precisely the people who most need help. The difference isn't in how forcefully you repeat the phrase, but in what you affirm and how you do it.

An affirmation helps when it reminds you of something true about yourself, not when it tries to convince you of something you don't believe.

Two different things with the same name

It helps to separate two practices that are often confused:

• Self-help affirmations. Present-tense, first-person phrases describing how you want to be ("I am a confident person," "I attract abundance"), repeated daily in front of the mirror or in writing.
• Values affirmation. A social psychology technique based on Claude Steele's theory (1988): writing for a few minutes about a value that matters to you (family, honesty, learning) and why. It doesn't try to convince you of anything about yourself; it reminds you of what gives your life meaning before you face a threat.

Almost all of the solid evidence concerns the second. The first has much less research and a lot more promise.

The pros: what is actually supported

They lower your guard against criticism. When something threatens your self-image (a mistake, bad health news, criticism), the natural reaction is to defend yourself and dismiss the message. A review by Cohen and Sherman (2014) shows that affirming your values beforehand reduces that defensiveness and makes it easier to hear uncomfortable information and act on it.

They buffer stress. In the study by Creswell and colleagues (2005), people who wrote about their most important value before speaking in front of evaluators had a lower response of cortisol, the stress hormone, than those who wrote about a value that mattered little to them.

They can make behavior change easier. Using brain imaging, Cascio and colleagues (2016) observed that thinking about one's own values activates brain regions linked to reward and self-related processing. And Falk and colleagues (2015) found that people who had affirmed their values this way responded better to health messages and, over the following month, spent less time sitting.

They help at specific moments of pressure. At school, brief values-affirmation exercises improved the grades of students who felt under negative stereotypes (Cohen and colleagues, 2006). But note: later, larger replications found smaller or null effects in some settings (Hanselman and colleagues, 2017), so it isn't a universal recipe.

Believable phrases help sustain effort. In sport, motivational self-talk ("come on, a little more") improves performance, especially in strength and endurance tasks, according to the meta-analysis by Hatzigeorgiadis and colleagues (2011). It works because it is concrete, used at the right moment, and doesn't require believing anything impossible.

The cons: when affirming yourself backfires

They can worsen the mood of those who need help most. In the well-known study by Joanne Wood and her team (2009), repeating "I am a lovable person" worsened the mood of people with low self-esteem and barely helped those whose self-esteem was already high. When the statement clashes with what you believe about yourself, the mind looks for evidence against it, and finds it.

They can replace action. Telling yourself "I'm disciplined" won't tidy your desk or go running for you. If the affirmation leaves you feeling you've done something, it can sap the drive to actually do it. Gabriele Oettingen's work on positive fantasies shows something similar: picturing yourself already at the goal reduces the energy to reach it (Kappes and Oettingen, 2011).

They can cover up real problems. Repeating "everything is fine" when it isn't delays necessary decisions, from sorting out debt to seeking help for a low mood that won't go away.

They are sold with promises they don't keep. Phrases like "I attract money" or "the universe gives me what I ask for" rest on the idea that thinking something makes it happen. There is no evidence for that, and the cost is twofold: frustration when it doesn't happen and guilt for "not believing hard enough."

How to use them so they add up

1. Affirm values, not traits. Instead of "I'm amazing," write for ten minutes about something that matters to you and why: your family, your work, the way you treat others. 2. Choose phrases you can believe. If "I'm confident" sounds false, try process versions: "I'm learning to speak in public" or "I've done hard things before." 3. Back them up with evidence. Pair the phrase with a fact: "I finished the report on time last week." An affirmation with evidence is a reminder, not an act of faith. 4. Use them right before the hard moment. Values affirmation works better before a threatening situation (an evaluation, a tense conversation, a medical checkup) than as a daily ritual with no context. 5. Try a question instead of a statement. Asking yourself "How am I going to pull this off?" invites planning. In lab experiments, asking whether one could do it worked better than asserting it (Senay and colleagues, 2010), although these were small studies. 6. Combine them with a plan. After the phrase, define the next concrete step: "I'm someone who looks after my health, so today I'll walk for 20 minutes after lunch."

Common mistakes

• Repeating phrases that contradict how you feel. If every time you say it an inner "yeah, right" pops up, the affirmation is working against you.
• Expecting them to work on their own. At best they are a nudge to act; they don't replace action.
• Using them to deny emotions. Saying "I'm calm" while your voice is shaking tends to increase tension. Acknowledging what you feel and then recalling what you value works better.
• Treating lab effects as guarantees. Even values affirmation, the best-studied version, has modest effects that vary by person and context.

When to seek help

If your inner dialogue is almost always harsh, if a low mood lasts for weeks or if you struggle to function day to day, positive phrases are no substitute for professional care. A mental health professional can help with better-supported tools, such as cognitive behavioral therapy.

Conclusion

Positive affirmations are neither magic nor a scam: they are a tool with a narrow range of use. They work when they remind you of something true and valuable about yourself, when they are believable and when they lead to action; they fail, and can do harm, when they ask you to believe what you don't or replace what you need to do. To test it this week: before your next difficult situation, write for ten minutes about the value that matters most to you and why, then note the first concrete step you'll take.

References

• Steele, C. M. (1988). The psychology of self-affirmation: Sustaining the integrity of the self. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 21.
• Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65.
• Creswell, J. D., et al. (2005). Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses. Psychological Science, 16(11).
• Cascio, C. N., et al. (2016). Self-affirmation activates brain systems associated with self-related processing and reward and is reinforced by future orientation. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(4).
• Falk, E. B., et al. (2015). Self-affirmation alters the brain's response to health messages and subsequent behavior change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(7).
• Cohen, G. L., Garcia, J., Apfel, N., & Master, A. (2006). Reducing the racial achievement gap: A social-psychological intervention. Science, 313(5791).
• Hanselman, P., Rozek, C. S., Grigg, J., & Borman, G. D. (2017). New evidence on self-affirmation effects and theorized sources of heterogeneity from large-scale replications. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(3).
• Wood, J. V., Perunovic, W. Q. E., & Lee, J. W. (2009). Positive self-statements: Power for some, peril for others. Psychological Science, 20(7).
• Hatzigeorgiadis, A., Zourbanos, N., Galanis, E., & Theodorakis, Y. (2011). Self-talk and sports performance: A meta-analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(4).
• Kappes, H. B., & Oettingen, G. (2011). Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(4).
• Senay, I., Albarracín, D., & Noguchi, K. (2010). Motivating goal-directed behavior through introspective self-talk. Psychological Science, 21(4).