Self-affirmation and an incongruent drinking norm: alcohol abuse prevention messages targeting young people

Dimitri Voisin (1) , Fabien Girandola (2) , Mathieu David (3) , Marie-Anastasie Aim (2)

1 C2S - Cognition, Santé, Société
2 LPS - Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale
3 UR - Université de La Réunion

Many health campaigns are designed to reduce dangerous binge drinking by challenging the drinking perceived norm. Both information about health risks and statements that only a few people binge drink (descriptive norm) threaten self-integrity for individuals targeted. So, to combat this self-threat and preserve their positive self-integrity, drinkers discredit the message as a coping strategy. An alternative to the coping strategy is a procedure of self-affirmation to protect self-integrity. Across three experiments, we found that self-affirmation does indeed reduce (Experiment 1) or delete (Experiments 2 and 3) discrediting, but only provided that there is no normative information in the health message. Individuals continued to use the discrediting strategy despite the fact that the participants were self-affirmed when they are told that few people binge drink among their age group. The theoretical implications for self-affirmation are discussed

Mots clés: self-affirmation; descriptive norm; deviance; discrediting

Domaines: Psychologie

Dimitri Voisin, Fabien Girandola, Mathieu David, Marie-Anastasie Aim. Self-affirmation and an incongruent drinking norm: alcohol abuse prevention messages targeting young people. Self and Identity, 2016, 15 (3), pp.262-282. ⟨10.1080/15298868.2015.1121916⟩. ⟨hal-03499905⟩