Replication Data for: Self-Affirmation and Identity-Driven Political Behavior

Psychological attachment to political parties can bias people’s attitudes, beliefs, and group evaluations. Studies from psychology suggest that self-affirmation theory may ameliorate this problem in the domain of politics on a variety of outcome measures. We report a series of studies conducted by separate research teams that examine whether a self-affirmation intervention affects a variety of outcomes, including political or policy attitudes, factual beliefs, conspiracy beliefs, affective polarization, and evaluations of news sources. The different research teams use a variety of self-affirmation interventions, research designs, and outcomes. Despite these differences, the research teams consistently find that self-affirmation treatments have little effect. These findings suggest considerable caution is warranted for researchers who wish to apply the self-affirmation framework to studies that investigate political attitudes and beliefs. By presenting the “null results” of separate research teams, we hope to spark a discussion about whether and how the self-affirmation paradigm should be applied to political topics.对政党的心理依附会使人们的态度、信念及群体评价产生偏差。心理学领域的研究表明，自我肯定理论（Self-affirmation Theory）或可在政治领域的多种结果测量维度上缓解这一问题。本研究报告了由多个独立研究团队开展的一系列研究，旨在检验自我肯定干预手段是否会对各类结果变量产生影响，涵盖政治或政策态度、事实性信念、阴谋论信念、情感极化以及新闻来源评价。各研究团队采用了多样化的自我肯定干预手段、研究设计与结果测量指标。尽管存在上述差异，各团队均一致发现，自我肯定干预几乎未产生显著效果。上述研究结果提示，对于希望将自我肯定理论框架应用于政治态度与信念相关研究的学者而言，需保持高度审慎。本研究通过呈现各独立团队的“零结果（null results）”，期望引发学界对自我肯定范式是否以及应如何应用于政治议题的讨论。