Self-Affirmation has the Power to Offset the Harmful Effects of Money Reminders

Self-affirmation, which encourages people to ponder why their core values are important to them, promotes a broad-minded, big picture perspective of the self, and enhances psychological resources of self-integrity (Sherman and Cohen 2006). Prior research has provided ample evidence that self-affirmation positively affects interpersonal aspects of the self by making people be more open to those holding opposite opinions who accordingly are judged favorably (Cohen, Aronson and Steele 2000; Sherman and Cohen 2002), reducing within-relationship threats (Lockwood et al. 2004), and enhancing a key other-directed feeling—love (Croker, Niiya, and Mischkowski 2008) In this paper, we asked the question: Given its impressive ability to promote prosocial responses, could self-affirmation reduce the negative effects of money on the interpersonal self? Money, a social resource, makes people feel self-sufficient and behave accordingly (Vohs, Mead and Goode 2006, 2008). When reminded of money, people pursue personal goals and prefer to be separate from others. Thus, people prefer that others do not depend on them, and want to be free from dependency (e.g., reduced helpfulness toward others and reduced requests for help) (Vohs et al. 2006, 2008). Further, money leads people to prefer to be separate from others, and to be less distressed about social exclusion (Zhou, Vohs and Baumeister 2009). In sum, prior research has consistently found that money negatively affects the interpersonal self. We proposed that affirming important values will help people be less affected by money. Within the broader and abstract perspective of the self, money should lose its symbolic power.