In Groups
Besides reducing self-based and relationship-based threats, self-affirmations could also reduce threats to the self at a collective level, i.e. when people confront some threatening opinions or humiliating comments about the groups they belong to, such as race, gender, or affiliation with a location or sports team.
The usefulness of self-affirmation is portrayed in the experiment conducted by David Sherman. American "patriots" were given to read a report arguing "Islamic terrorism can be understood in terms of the social and economic forces of the Middle East" and "existence of flaws in US foreign policy to the fostering of terrorist attacks". When these participants were asked to self-affirm prior to reading the report (to write about an important value unrelated to their national identity), patriots became more open to the report. Self-affirmation also helps eliminate self-serving bias and group-serving bias, which is prevalent in attributions and group judgments. In conclusion, by affirming some aspects of the self, and unrelated to their group, an individual is able to maintain an overall self-perception of worth and integrity.
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Famous quotes containing the word groups:
“In properly organized groups no faith is required; what is required is simply a little trust and even that only for a little while, for the sooner a man begins to verify all he hears the better it is for him.”
—George Gurdjieff (c. 1877–1949)
“In America every woman has her set of girl-friends; some are cousins, the rest are gained at school. These form a permanent committee who sit on each other’s affairs, who “come out” together, marry and divorce together, and who end as those groups of bustling, heartless well-informed club-women who govern society. Against them the Couple of Ehepaar is helpless and Man in their eyes but a biological interlude.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)