Do affirmations work?
Sometimes. It depends on who is saying them, what they say, and whether they believe a word of it. The research has a surprise in it, and it's one worth knowing before you stand in front of a mirror tomorrow morning.
Why people use them
Positive affirmations are short statements about yourself, said out loud or written down, usually every day: "I am confident." "I am enough." "I deserve good things." The idea is that saying something often enough makes you believe it, and believing it makes it true.
Plenty of people swear by them. When the researchers in the study below surveyed people about them, they found that positive self-statements were common, and that people generally believed they worked. And the need behind them is real. Everyone needs reminding, now and then, that they're worth something.
Call it vanity if you like: we all need, now and then, to be reassured of our worth.
Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims
The question is whether this particular way of meeting that need does what it promises.
When they backfire
In 2009, Joanne Wood, Elaine Perunovic and John Lee at the University of Waterloo published a study in Psychological Science that tested exactly that. They had people repeat the statement "I'm a lovable person" to themselves, then measured how they felt.
People who already had high self-esteem felt a little better afterward, though only modestly. People with low self-esteem, the ones affirmations are usually meant for, felt worse than people who hadn't repeated anything.
The researchers' explanation is simple. A statement that is far from what you believe about yourself doesn't get absorbed. It gets argued with. Somebody who doesn't feel lovable says "I'm a lovable person", and a voice in their head answers "no you're not", and now they've spent the morning rehearsing the thing they were trying to get away from. The affirmation becomes a reminder of the gap.
Life is too short to waste a precious part of it pretending to be someone else.
Alfred de Vigny, Servitude and Grandeur of Arms
That doesn't mean affirmations are useless. It means they're most likely to help the people who need them least, and most likely to sting the people who need them most.
What psychologists mean by self-affirmation
Here's the confusing part. There is a well-studied idea called self-affirmation, and it does have good evidence behind it. It just isn't the mirror kind.
The theory comes from the psychologist Claude Steele, who proposed it in 1988. His idea was that people work hard to protect a sense that they are basically good and capable, and that when one part of that feels threatened (a bad review, a failure, criticism) they can steady themselves by remembering something else that matters to them. You don't have to be good at everything. You just have to remember you're more than the thing that went wrong.
In the studies, self-affirmation usually looks like this: pick a value that's important to you, such as your family, your sense of humor, your faith, music or being a good friend, and write for a few minutes about why it matters and a time it showed up in your life. That's it. No claims about yourself, nothing to believe or disbelieve.
Geoffrey Cohen and David Sherman reviewed the research on these short writing exercises in the Annual Review of Psychology in 2014. They found that values affirmations can make people less defensive and less stressed in threatening situations, and in some school studies, including a well-known one Cohen and his colleagues published in Science in 2006, they improved grades for students who felt their group was being judged. Larger follow-ups since then have found smaller and less consistent effects, so it's not magic. But it's a much better-supported idea than repeating "I am amazing".
What to try instead
Write about a value, not a trait
Instead of telling yourself you're confident, spend five minutes writing about something you care about and why. It works on the same need, and there's nothing in it for the critic in your head to argue with.
Say things you can actually believe
If you like the format of a daily statement, make it one you'd sign. "I'm learning to do this." "I've got through hard weeks before." "I can do the next small thing." Following the Waterloo study's logic, a sentence that's true doesn't start an argument.
Collect evidence
Confidence built on proof lasts longer than confidence built on repetition. Keep a short list of things you handled, finished or got through. On a bad day, read it. It's harder to dismiss than a slogan, because it happened.
Talk to yourself the way you'd talk to a friend
Most of us would never say to a friend what we say to ourselves after a mistake. You don't have to flip that into praise. Plain kindness is enough: "That was a rough one. You'll be fine."
Why not be a dear friend to yourself?
Alain, Alain on Happiness
If affirmations work for you
Then keep going. The research doesn't say they never help. If saying them leaves you feeling steadier, that's the best evidence there is for you. It's when they leave you feeling like a fraud that it's worth switching the format.
One such switch is to read other people's words instead of statements about yourself. That's the approach Dailies takes: a line somebody else wrote, which doesn't ask you to believe anything about yourself, just to sit with it for a moment. We've written longer comparisons with two affirmation apps, I am and ThinkUp, if you're weighing the two approaches.
Questions
Do positive affirmations actually work?
For some people. A 2009 study in Psychological Science found that repeating "I'm a lovable person" helped people with high self-esteem a little, but made people with low self-esteem feel worse. Writing about values that matter to you, which psychologists call self-affirmation, has better support.
Can affirmations make you feel worse?
Yes, if you don't believe them. When a statement is far from how you see yourself, your mind tends to argue with it, and the argument reminds you of what you were trying to forget. That was the explanation Joanne Wood and her colleagues gave for their findings.
What is self-affirmation theory?
An idea proposed by the psychologist Claude Steele in 1988: people protect their sense of being good and capable, and when one part of it is threatened, remembering other things they value helps them stay steady. In research it usually takes the form of a short writing exercise about a personal value.
What can I say instead of affirmations?
Statements you can actually believe, such as "I'm learning to do this" or "I've got through hard weeks before." Or skip statements about yourself altogether and write a few minutes about something you value, or read a line someone else wrote.
How do I write an affirmation that works?
Keep it believable, make it about what you're doing rather than what you are, and tie it to something you value. "I show up for my family" is easier to accept on a bad day than "I am perfect", because you have evidence for it.
Keep reading
Start today with something good.
Set it up once. Dailies takes it from there.
