The relationship between individual differences in spontaneous self-affirmation and affect associated with self-weighing

We investigate whether the tendency to self-affirm in response to threat is associated with how people feel when they weigh themselves. People who were preoccupied with their weight anticipated feeling less negative (Studies 1a and 1b) and felt less negative (Study 2) when self-weighing if they typically affirmed their strengths. Study 3 experimentally manipulated self-affirmation. Although this intervention prompted affirmation of strengths it did not influence how participants felt when they subsequently weighed themselves. Together, the findings suggest that the tendency to spontaneously affirm strengths, but not values or social relations, is associated with the psychological outcomes of self-weighing and thus provide the basis for understanding how such individual differences might moderate how people respond in other self-evaluative contexts.