Affirmation of Personal Values Buffers Neuroendocrine and Psychological Stress Response

Stress is implicated in the development and progression of a broad array of mental and physical health disorders. Theory and research on the self suggest that self-affirming activities may buffer these adverse effects. This study experimentally investigated whether affirmations of personal values attenuate physiological and psychological stress responses. Eighty-five participants completed either a value-affirmation task or a control task prior to participating in a laboratory stress challenge. Participants who affirmed their values had significantly lower cortisol responses to stress, compared with control participants. Dispositional self-resources (e.g., trait selfesteem and optimism) moderated the relation between value affirmation and psychological stress responses, such that participants who had high self-resources and had affirmed personal values reported the least stress. These findings suggest that reflecting on personal values can keep neuroendocrine and psychological responses to stress at low levels. Implications for research on the self, stress processes, health, and interventions are discussed. Stress is implicated in the development and progression of a broad array of pathological conditions. These include psychological disorders, such as depression and anxiety (Alonso et al., 2004; La Via et al., 1996), as well as medical disorders, including coronary heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes (McEwen & Seeman, 1999). Although not all the mechanisms connecting stress to these outcomes are known, chronic threats can affect the functioning of the body’s stress systems, namely, the sympathetic-adrenomedullary (SAM) axis and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis, in ways prognostic for or related to these disorders (McEwen, 1998). In response to threat, the SAM system coordinates the release of catecholamines, triggering increases in heart rate and blood pressure, among other changes, and the HPA axis coordinates the release of glucocorticoids, including cortisol. Although activation of these stress systems facilitates short-term fight-orflight responses to threats, prolonged or recurrent activation can compromise the resilience of these systems, laying the groundwork for chronic mental and physical health disorders (McEwen, 1998). Accordingly, identifying resources that mute the psychological and biological impact of stress is an important research priority with implications for mental and physical health. Theories of the self, including self-affirmation theory (Steele, 1988) and cognitive adaptation theory (Taylor, 1983), have posited that affirmation or enhancement of the self can buffer an individual against the adverse effects of stress. Several lines of research support this prediction. On the biological side, Taylor, Lerner, Sherman, Sage, and McDowell (2003a) found that relative to their peers, individuals who chronically enhanced their personal qualities had lower basal cortisol levels and lower cardiovascular responses to a laboratory challenge (see also Seery, Blascovich, Weisbuch, & Vick, 2004). On the psychological side, affirmations of personal values can attenuate perceptions of threat (Keough, 1998; Sherman & Cohen, 2002; Steele, 1988), reduce rumination after failure (Koole, Smeets, van Knippenberg, & Dijksterhuis, 1999), and reduce defensive responses to threatening information (Sherman, Nelson, & Steele, 2000). The primary goal of the present investigation was to test whether an intervention involving reflection on personal values Address correspondence to J. David Creswell, UCLA Department of Psychology, Franz Hall, Box 951563, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563; e-mail: [email protected]. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 846 Volume 16—Number 11 Copyright r 2005 American Psychological Society (Steele, 1988) could buffer physiological and psychological stress responses during a laboratory stress challenge. A secondary goal was to examine whether dispositional self-resources moderate the effect of value affirmation on stress responses. Although previous research has found that dispositional selfresources can protect against stress (e.g., Taylor et al., 2003a), no experimental studies have examined whether a manipulation designed to recruit self-relevant resources has these beneficial effects.