The Basic Story of Self-Affirmation

Self-affirmation can help someone rethink a conviction, or maybe confront some evidence that they were not receptive to. I think it based a kind of manipulation of attention or expansion of what we're attending to in this situation. The person is tunneled in on something that's very distressing to them. They're so captured by the emotion in that situation that they don't see anything else about themselves. With a little perspective, the threatening thing isn't as threatening.