Some people say affirmations are fufu, pie-from-the-sky wishes that don’t work, while others say affirmations are powerful words that help rain blessing upon your life.

Which side are you on?

Whichever side you’re on, today we’re going to get to the bottom of this argument by looking at five different research-based studies that discuss the use of affirmations.

If this excites you, buckle up, and let’s go on an adventure together.

Study #1

“Self-affirmation changes the way your brain responds to health messages”

– Shelley E. Taylor

Health affirmations like:

“Wellness is the natural state of my body”

“I do my best to keep my body healthy at all times”

And “My Positive thoughts help make my body healthy”

All help your brain to be more receptive to health messages and interventions. Such affirmations cause you to start behaving in manners that promote healthy behaviors that’ll in turn make you healthy.

This study describes self-affirmations as a process of saying, writing or thinking about one’s core values.

Repeatedly affirming those values decreases defensiveness and mechanisms in your brain that cause you to not act on what you’re saying.

Many hospitals have positive health communications and self-relevant messages on their walls. That’s no coincidence mind you.

Psychologists from the past have always believed that health affirmations help patients to recover faster even though there were no tests to prove this theory. To date, neural mechanisms that make affirmations a success are still a mystery.

Decreasing health risk behaviors through health communications and messages can be good but it has a limit. Some people can deem these messages threatening which triggers cognitive resistance.

This phenomenon is called problematic paradox – which states that people who’re engaged in high health risk activities like smoking and taking drugs will be defensive and less likely to alter their risky behaviors.

In simple words, this study states that self-affirmations do help. Using them will help you not resist the health messages that help you to live a healthy life.

Study #2

“Self-Affirmation helps to improve your problem-solving skills when under stress”

– J. David Creswell

As adults, we find ourselves in stressful situations all the time.

  • At work
  • Talking with our partners about money
  • Business negotiations, etc.

Whatever the reason, “positive self-affirmation will help you get through the situation with less pressure,” says a study that was done by J. David Cresswell and his colleagues.

80 participants from urban universities in Pittsburgh participated in the study for $20 or course credit.

Participants were given instructions on different tasks that they’ll do for a whole month.

Half the students who were chosen randomly were told to do a self-affirming activity every time before they performed the tasks and a half just performed the tasks without affirmations. The stress levels in the participants were measured before and after the tasks for a whole month.

At the end of the experiment, researchers found that not only did the group that did self-affirming activity have lower stress levels, but also performed better overall on the tasks that were given.

The conclusion to this study is that self-affirming activity helps you to complete the tasks with more ease than if you did without them.

Study #3

“Self-affirmation helps to activate brain systems associated with self-related reward and processing that’s reinforced by future orientation”

– Christopher N. Cascio

The self-affirmation theory states that a person who’s motivated to have or maintain a positive self-view can easily resist any threat to their perceived self-competence.

When any threat occurs, self-affirmations can restore your self-competence and help you reflect on your self-worth and core values.

Although this study shows evidence that affirmation interventions can reduce threats, it’s still unclear which psychological mechanisms are involved in this process.

The study that Christopher and his colleagues were conducting was to try to elucidate the various mechanisms associated with self-affirmations.

They did that by examining participants’ neural activity during self-affirmation tasks that were designed for magnetic resonance imaging. They tested how much self-affirmation activities increased the brain activity in systems that pertained to positive valuation.

The conclusion to this study was that affirmations help to increase the value you have towards positive things in your life. The best way to do self-affirming activity is to:

  • Reflect on your core values,
  • Associate them with a rewarding experience,
  • Write them down,
  • And say them out.

Doing this will create neural pathways that would connect with neural mechanisms associated with reward and a positive valuation that would make you act per your future vision.

Study #4

“Self-Affirmations helps to improve executive performance for the powerless, and reinstates your resourceful self”

– Sumaya Albalooshi

Power can be defined as the control over resources that you deem as valuable and over social relations.

Being powerless can overwork your mental resources, constraining your existence. All humans are under the control of something in one way or the other. If that thing makes them feel powerless though, research done by Sumaya and his colleagues says that they can use self-affirmations to regain their power back.