The contingences of the relationship between self-affirmation and unethical behavior

Abstract

Self-affirmation has been shown to be an effective psychological intervention that reduces people’s defensive attitudes and motivation under identity threat. However, scholars have also found the “dark side” of self-affirmation recently. Drawing on social-cognitive theory and self-affirmation theory, we suggest the types of identity under threat determine whether affirming alternative identity resources would lead to more or less unethical behaviors. Specifically, we argue that self-affirmation would lead to more unethical behaviors when people’s competency identity was threatened, while self- affirmation would lead to less unethical behaviors when their impression identity was threatened. In addition, we also highlight people’s risk preference as one affirming resource that accelerates the effects of self- affirmation. Two experiments’ results support our arguments and show that the type of threatened identities and risk preference interactively moderate the relationship between self-affirmation and unet...