Promoting and Protecting Subjective Well-Being Using Self-Affirmation

Subjective well-being, refers to an appraisal of one's own life as a whole. Subjective well-being is regularly being used by governments as a measure of observing social progress, informing new policy and promoting behaviour change, in comparison to more objective measures of social progress such as gross domestic product. A key aim of government policies is therefore to find the most efficient, cost-effective ways to improve people's subjective well-being, to determine the most efficient ways of improving quality of life. There are currently a number of ways in which the government is attempting to address this, with programs in place that are designed to improve people's well-being, such as Altogether Better (Yorkshire and Humber Strategic Health Authority) and Target Well-being (Federation of Groundwork Trust), as well as NHS programmes and free well-being courses. However, these programmes were not always found to be effective in improving people's well-being, particularly when the programmes involved health awareness activities. This limited effectiveness of programmes involving health awareness activities makes them unlikely to be cost-effective as a well-being intervention. This suggests the importance of developing an effective intervention to improve people's well-being, that could also be used within government/NHS well-being programs, to enhance the effectiveness of said programs in improving well-being to make them more cost-effective, particularly in those promoting health awareness.

Self-affirmation theory provides an approach to improve subjective well-being by overcoming feelings of threat to the self. A threat to one's sense of self could undermine one's subjective well-being. Self-affirmation theory states that people strive to maintain a positive, moral and adaptive self-image, and that threats to the self (e.g., a smoker being told that smoking is bad for them), motivates them to defend their global sense of self (e.g., by convincing themselves that the information is flawed). According to self-affirmation theory, people's sense of self can also be protected by bolstering self-image in a domain that is not under direct threat. For example, if one feels that their sense of self is threatened in a certain domain (e.g., by anti-smoking messages), then one can bolster self-image by compensating in another domain (e.g., by doing charity work). There is a large amount of evidence to support this theory, mostly from studies in which self-affirmation manipulations (i.e. by reminding people of their 'core values') have been found to be effective in overcoming threats to the self and promoting receptiveness to health-risk communications.

The effectiveness of self-affirmation in overcoming threats to the self is not specific to health-risk communications as research has found self-affirmation also to be effective in overcoming threats to the self that occur within other domains, such as self-esteem, anxiety and well-being, suggesting that they could be employed to protect subjective well-being across populations at a low cost. There are limitations associated with research in this area however, as there have only been very few studies that have looked at the effects of self-affirmation on well-being and their samples are often limited and lack generalisability. Also, no research to date has measured whether more self-affirmation interventions would produce greater effects. This is of importance as research has regularly demonstrated evidence of dose dependant relationships between a psychological intervention and its subsequent effects, with a greater number of psychological interventions being associated with greater effects. It would also be beneficial if research were to be conducted to determine the effects of self-affirmation in a sample of people who are already undergoing a well-being intervention (e.g., a government programme or NHS course), to see whether self-affirmation can enhance the effectiveness of the intervention in improving well-being, as this has not yet been explored and could help to make the intervention more cost-effective. Therefore, the present study aims to confirm this positive effect of self-affirmation on subjective well-being in a sample that consists of a wider range of backgrounds and demographics that are already undergoing a well-being intervention.

In addition to this, there has been research that has looked at examining mediators of the self-affirmation process, however the mechanisms for explaining the effects of self-affirmation are not yet clearly understood. Some research has found evidence of self-esteem acting as a mediator in the self-affirmation process. However, more research needs to be conducted to confirm these findings as they have been inconsistent, with some research showing no evidence of self-esteem acting as a mediator. Furthermore, other research has found that self-affirmation led to reductions in state anxiety. This suggests state anxiety may be acting as a mediator in the self-affirmation process, as undergoing self-affirmation resulted in changes in state anxiety, with the self-affirming effects possibly being occurring due to reductions in state anxiety. As there has been no research that has addressed this possibility of state anxiety acting as a mediator in the self-affirmation process, research should be conducted on this as this as this would allow greater understanding of the mechanisms involved.

Accordingly, the present study will test the ability of self-affirmation to promote and/or protect subjective well-being by comparing differences in subjective well-being in those that undergo self-affirmation interventions with those that do not. The study will also compare the difference between the effects of one self-affirmation intervention with that of two self-affirmation interventions (i.e. the 'booster' condition), to determine whether there is a dose-dependent relationship of the effects of self-affirmation. The present study will also measure the effects of self-affirmation on self-esteem and state anxiety to test the possibility of mediators of the self-affirmation process. Participants will be recruited from an NHS college which runs free courses that are designed to help people improve their health and/or well-being. It is likely that those who attend this college may feel threatened by the courses, such as feeling threatened by opening-up and talking through issues during the courses, which would lead to defensive processing and undermine the effectiveness of the courses in their aim of improving people's well-being. Self-affirmation could help to overcome these feelings of threat by reducing defensive processing, which could then enhance the effectiveness of the courses in helping people improve their well-being. This is a particularly important population to recruit from as the courses ran by the college often promote health awareness, which research has identified as being less effective in improving well-being. Self-affirmation interventions could therefore help to improve the cost-effectiveness of the courses.