Spend a few minutes writing about a value that matters to you and is unrelated to the topic before reading evidence that threatens your identity or your group, which lowers the defensiveness that otherwise makes you reject accurate information.

How to do it

1. 1Notice the tell: you are about to read or hear something that would make you, your choices, or your side look bad, and you can already feel the counter-arguments forming.
2. 2Pause and pick a value that matters to you and has nothing to do with the topic (family, craft, faith, humor, loyalty to friends, being a good neighbor).
3. 3Write for three to five minutes about why that value matters and a time you lived up to it. Writing is what the studies used; a mental note is weaker.
4. 4Then read the threatening material and ask only one question of it: is it accurate? Leave "what does this say about me" for later.
5. 5If you want someone else to hear hard news, apply the same logic: lead with what you genuinely respect about them, or ask about something they are proud of, before the difficult part. It works only if it is sincere.

When to use it

• •Reading a fact-check, audit, or study that contradicts a belief tied to your politics, religion, profession, or a purchase you defended.
• •Receiving health information about a habit you are attached to (smoking, drinking, diet).
• •Hearing feedback about a mistake at work or in a relationship, when you can feel yourself preparing to argue instead of listen.
• •Trying to get a defensive person to consider evidence without triggering a fight.

Counters

Evidence and how strong it is

Steele (1988) proposed that people defend a global sense of self-integrity, so that shoring it up in one domain reduces defensiveness in another. Cohen, Aronson & Steele (2000) showed that affirmed participants evaluated evidence against their positions on capital punishment and abortion more even-handedly and moved further toward it. Cohen & Sherman (2014) review two decades of self-affirmation research, including field trials in schools, health, and politics, and describe the mechanism as widening perspective so that a threat to one identity is not experienced as a threat to the whole self. Evidence strength: moderate. The effect is replicated across many labs, but a meta-analysis of health-behavior studies (Epton et al. 2015) found small average effects, and self-affirmation had inconsistent effects on political misperceptions in Nyhan & Reifler (2019). It reliably reduces defensiveness; it does not reliably change behavior.

1. Steele, C. M. (1988). The Psychology of Self-Affirmation: Sustaining the Integrity of the Self. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 21, 261-302
   The founding theory that affirming self-integrity in one domain reduces defensive responses to threats in another.
2. Cohen, G. L., Aronson, J., & Steele, C. M. (2000). When Beliefs Yield to Evidence: Reducing Biased Evaluation by Affirming the Self. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26(9), 1151-1164
   Experiments showing that affirmed participants evaluated counter-attitudinal evidence more even-handedly.
3. Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333-371 · link
   Review of the self-affirmation literature, its mechanism, and its boundary conditions.
4. Epton, T., Harris, P. R., Kane, R., van Koningsbruggen, G. M., & Sheeran, P. (2015). The Impact of Self-Affirmation on Health-Behavior Change: A Meta-Analysis. Health Psychology, 34(3), 187-196
   Meta-analytic evidence that effects on health messages, intentions, and behavior are real but small.
5. Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2019). The Roles of Information Deficits and Identity Threat in the Prevalence of Misperceptions. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 29(2), 222-244
   Evidence that self-affirmation had inconsistent effects on political misperceptions, the reason evidence strength is rated moderate.