Ananda Manifest & Affirmation

Do Affirmations Work? What 35 Years of Research Actually Says

Affirmations can lower stress hormones and open people up to change, but the wrong kind can backfire. Here's what the research shows, and how to use it.

By the Ananda team7 min read

Search for “do affirmations work?” and you’ll find two camps. One says repeating I am rich, I am loved, I am unstoppable in the mirror will rewire your life. The other says it’s all wishful thinking.

The research says something more interesting than either. Some kinds of affirmations have solid evidence behind them, measured in stress hormones, brain scans and behavior change. Other kinds can make some people feel worse. The difference comes down to what you affirm, and how.

Where the science of affirmations comes from

In 1988, Stanford psychologist Claude Steele proposed self-affirmation theory. His idea was that people are strongly motivated to see themselves as good, capable and whole. When something threatens that picture (a failure, criticism, bad news about your health), you tend to get defensive. You explain the threat away, avoid it or dig in.

But Steele noticed something useful: you can protect your sense of self by affirming a different part of it. If you remind yourself of something you genuinely value, like your family, your creativity or your honesty, the threat in one area feels less overwhelming, and you can face it more openly.

That’s the version of “affirmation” researchers have studied for over three decades. It looks less like chanting I am a millionaire and more like writing a few sentences about why something you care about matters to you.

What the research has found

Lower stress responses

In a 2005 study at UCLA, David Creswell and colleagues had participants complete a stressful laboratory task: giving a speech and doing mental arithmetic in front of evaluators. Before the task, some participants wrote about a personal value that mattered to them.

Those who had affirmed their values showed lower cortisol responses to the stress, compared with a control group. Cortisol is one of the body’s main stress hormones.

More openness to hard information

Across many studies, people who complete a self-affirmation exercise first are less defensive when they receive threatening health information, such as messages about the risks of drinking, smoking or not wearing sunscreen. They’re more likely to accept the message rather than argue with it.

A 2015 meta-analysis by Tracy Epton and colleagues pooled the results of well over a hundred experiments and found that self-affirmation had small but real effects on people’s acceptance of health messages, their intentions to change, and their actual behavior.

Brain activity linked to self and reward

In a 2016 brain-imaging study, Christopher Cascio and colleagues found that self-affirmation increased activity in brain regions involved in thinking about yourself and in processing reward, especially when people reflected on their values in the future. In plain terms: thinking about what matters to you seems to register as personally meaningful and rewarding.

Performance under pressure

Some of the most famous studies come from schools. Short values-affirmation writing exercises, done a few times across a school year, have been linked to better grades among students who faced negative stereotypes about their group. We go into those in Affirmations for Students.

The honest caveats

Good research also tells you where the limits are.

  • Effects are usually small. Affirmations nudge things. They don’t transform a life on their own.
  • Not every study replicates. Large-scale replications of the school studies, published in 2017 by Hanselman and colleagues, found smaller and less consistent effects than the original studies. Context matters a lot.
  • The kind of affirmation matters. Almost all of this research tested values affirmations, not the “I am perfect” style that fills social media.

When affirmations backfire

In 2009, psychologist Joanne Wood and colleagues tested a classic positive self-statement: “I am a lovable person.”

For people with high self-esteem, repeating it helped a little. But for people with low self-esteem, it backfired. They felt worse afterwards than people who didn’t repeat it.

The likely reason: when a statement clashes too much with what you believe about yourself, your mind argues back. Lovable? Remember last week? The affirmation becomes a reminder of the gap between where you are and where you’re “supposed” to be.

That’s why the most effective affirmations tend to be:

  • Anchored in evidence from your actual life (“I kept going after I lost that job”).
  • Believable today, not in some fantasy future.
  • About what you value, not only about how you want to feel.

How to use affirmations the research-backed way

Here’s a simple method built on what the studies tested.

1. Start with values, not wishes

List a few things that genuinely matter to you: family, honesty, learning, faith, humor, creativity, health, friendship. Pick one.

2. Write two or three sentences about why it matters

For example: “My friendships matter to me because they’ve carried me through every hard year. I show up for people, and they show up for me.” This is close to the exercise used in many studies.

3. Turn it into a short affirmation

“I’m someone who shows up for the people I love.” It’s believable because it’s true, and you just reminded yourself why.

4. Use it before something hard

The lab studies used affirmations before stressful moments. Try reading yours before a difficult conversation, a medical appointment, an exam or a big decision.

5. Add a bridge if it doesn’t feel true yet

If a statement makes you wince, soften it: “I’m learning to…” or “I’m open to…” A statement your mind accepts beats a bigger one it rejects. We walk through this in How to Write Personalized Affirmations That Actually Feel True.

15 research-informed affirmations to start with

These are built around values and real evidence, the style that has the most research support.

  1. I care deeply about the people in my life, and that care shows in what I do.
  2. I’ve handled hard things before, and I can draw on that now.
  3. My worth isn’t decided by one bad day or one result.
  4. I value learning, so mistakes are part of the process.
  5. Honesty matters to me, even when it’s harder.
  6. I’m more than this one problem.
  7. I keep promises to myself, starting small.
  8. I’m the kind of person who keeps going.
  9. I can take in hard feedback without losing sight of who I am.
  10. What I care about is bigger than what I’m afraid of.
  11. I’ve made a difference for someone before, and I can again.
  12. I’m allowed to be a work in progress.
  13. I bring something real to my work and my relationships.
  14. My values guide my choices, even on tired days.
  15. I’m learning to see myself as clearly and kindly as I see others.

So, do affirmations work?

Yes, with conditions. Affirmations grounded in your real values and experiences have measurable effects on stress, openness and behavior. Affirmations that deny reality, especially for people who are struggling, can backfire.

Think of affirmations as a way of reminding yourself who you are when something threatens to make you forget. Used that way, they’re one of the simplest and best-studied tools in psychology.

Affirmations support wellbeing, but they aren’t a treatment for depression, anxiety or any other condition. If you’re struggling, please talk to a doctor or a licensed therapist.

How Ananda can help

Ananda Manifest & Affirmation is built on this research. Instead of generic quotes, it asks you about things you’ve actually done and what you’re working through right now, then writes seven affirmations anchored in your own story, so they’re believable from the first read. You can read or listen to them in any of 70 languages, save the ones that land and keep a daily streak.

Sources

  • Steele, C. M. (1988). The psychology of self-affirmation: Sustaining the integrity of the self. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 21, 261–302.
  • Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333–371.
  • Creswell, J. D., Welch, W. T., Taylor, S. E., Sherman, D. K., Gruenewald, T. L., & Mann, T. (2005). Affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses. Psychological Science, 16(11), 846–851.
  • 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.
  • Cascio, C. N., O’Donnell, M. B., Tinney, F. J., Lieberman, M. D., Taylor, S. E., Strecher, V. J., & Falk, E. B. (2016). Self-affirmation activates brain systems associated with self-related processing and reward and is reinforced by future orientation. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(4), 621–629.
  • Hanselman, P., Rozek, C. S., Grigg, J., & Borman, G. D. (2017). New evidence on self-affirmation effects and theorized sources of heterogeneity from large-scale replications. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(3), 405–424.
  • Wood, J. V., Perunovic, W. Q. E., & Lee, J. W. (2009). Positive self-statements: Power for some, peril for others. Psychological Science, 20(7), 860–866.