Self-Affirmation: Construct Validity

Overview

Background: \- People respond differently when asked about their values. They also respond differently when they learn about how their actions affect their lives and health. Researchers want to learn more about these differences. This can help them improve public health messages. Objective: \- To see how people respond differently to questions about their values and to information about alcohol and breast cancer. Eligibility: Study 1 \- Women age 18 and older. Study 2 \& Study 3 -Women and men aged 18 and older to take part in these studies if they do not meet the US recommendations of eating 5 or more servings of fruits and vegetables per week. Design: * This study will take place online. * Participants will be randomly assigned to a group that will complete a certain task. * Researchers will ask participants to complete 2 small studies: * Values Study. Some participants may write briefly about a value that is important to them or to someone they are close to. Some participants will complete a short questionnaire instead of the writing exercise. * Study 1: Alcohol and Breast Cancer Study. Participants will read a health message. This will be about the link between alcohol use and increased breast cancer risk. Participants will then answer questions about what they read and their beliefs about alcohol and breast cancer. -Study 2: Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and Health Study. Participants will read a health message about the fruit and vegetable consumption. Participants will then answer questions about what they read and their beliefs about fruit and vegetable consumption. -Study 3: Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and Health Study. Participants will read a health message about the fruit and vegetable consumption. Participants will then answer questions about what they read and their beliefs about fruit and vegetable consumption. Complete a follow-up survey that will be emailed to you through the mTurk system a week after you complete the main study. * Both studies in either Study 1, Study 2 and Study 3 should take about 30 minutes.

Self-affirmation, a process by which individuals reflect on cherished personal values is a potent means of augmenting the effectiveness of threatening health communications. Individuals tend to be defensive against information suggesting their behavior puts them at risk for disease or negative health. Previous evidence suggests that self-affirmation may reduce defensiveness to threatening health information, increasing openness to the message and resulting in increased disease risk perceptions, disease-related worry, intentions to engage in preventive behavior, and actual behavioral change. Understanding the mechanisms that explain these robust effects would yield evidence important for dissemination, including ways to refine self-affirmation interventions and make them more potent, which could change the ways that public health messages are constructed. Thus, we aim to elucidate potential mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of self-affirmation, including self-activation, general affirmation, and domain-specific affirmation. In study 1, female human subjects will be randomly assigned to one of eleven affirmation or self- activation conditions. Following the affirmation or activation task, subjects will read about the documented link between alcohol and breast cancer. Finally, they will be asked a series of questions about their intentions to reduce drinking, their perceived risk of breast cancer, and their worry about breast cancer. Study 2 will replicate study 1, but in a different behavioral domain (physical activity) and a different sample (both males and females who do not meet physical activity recommendations). Study 3 will extend Studies 1 and 2 by examining whether the most effective self-affirmations identified in these studies produce short-term increases in fruit and vegetable consumption. Drawing on previous research, we hypothesize these inductions will be effective to the degree that they involve a self-affirmation, but will not be effective if they involve only other-affirmation or self-activation.