Affirming the self through online profiles

Self-affirmation is the process of bringing to awareness important aspects of the self, such as values, goals, and treasured characteristics. When affirmed, individuals are more open-minded and less defensive. This study examines whether social networking tools, such as Facebook, have self-affirming value. Participants were asked to either spend time on their own Facebook profiles, or on a stranger's profile. Afterwards, they were given negative feedback on a task. Participants who spent time on their own profiles were more accepting of the feedback, and less likely to engage in ego-protective mechanisms, such as derogating the task or the evaluator. In fact, they behaved identically to participants who completed a classic self-affirmation manipulation. The theoretical contributions of this paper include (1) identifying intrapersonal effects of online self-presentation and (2) extending self-affirmation theory to include social media use.