Self-affirmation—a theory-based technique to affirm the adaptive adequacy of the self—can promote positive behavior change and adaptive outcomes, although effects are variable. We extend a novel framework (Trigger and Channel), proposing three conditions that facilitate self-affirmation-induced behavior change: (a) presence of psychological threat, (b) presence of resources to foster change, and (c) timeliness of the self-affirmation with respect to threat and resources. Using health behavior as a focus, we present meta-analytic evidence demonstrating that when these conditions are met, self-affirmation acts as a psychological trigger into a positive channel of resources that facilitate behavior change. The presence of a timely threat and the availability of timely resources independently predicted larger self-affirmation effects on behavior change, and the two interacted synergistically to predict still larger effects. The results illustrate the conditionality of self-affirmation effects and offer guidelines for when, where, and for whom self-affirmation will be most effective.

自我肯定是一种确认自我适应能力的基于理论的技术，尽管效果是可变的，但可以促进积极的行为改变和适应性结果。我们扩展了一个新颖的框架（“触发器”和“渠道”），提出了三个条件来促进自我肯定诱发的行为改变：（a）心理威胁的存在，（b）促进变革的资源的存在以及（c）自我的时效性-关于威胁和资源的确认。以健康行为为重点，我们提供了荟萃分析证据，表明当满足这些条件时，自我肯定会成为促进行为改变的积极资源的心理触发因素。及时威胁的存在和及时资源的可用性独立地预测了对行为改变的更大的自我肯定影响，并且两者协同相互作用以预测更大的影响。结果说明了自我肯定效果的条件，并为何时，何地以及谁对自我肯定最有效提供了指导。