Joanne Wood

Who they are

Wood should not be confused with Wendy Wood, the habit researcher. The 2009 paper was written with W. Q. Elaine Perunovic and John W. Lee.

This page records only what the papers and their published records state. Biography beyond the cited work is not given here.

Key papers

Positive self-statements: power for some, peril for others (2009), with Perunovic and Lee. Three studies. A survey of 249 undergraduates found the practice common and believed in, and found that people with higher self-esteem used it more and judged it more helpful. In a repetition experiment with 68 students, half repeated "I am a lovable person" sixteen times. Among people with low self-esteem, mood fell; among people with high self-esteem, it rose. In a third experiment with 116 undergraduates, being told to focus only on ways the statement was true made people with low self-esteem feel worse than being told to consider ways it might and might not be true.

Key ideas

The central idea is that a statement far from a person's own view can meet resistance and make the gap more visible, so the practice helps those who need it least. The authors drew on established work on latitudes of acceptance, self-comparison and self-verification to explain why.

The paper states its own limits: student samples, one phrase, and the exclusion of participants of East Asian descent, so the finding is about Western participants. The authors also name when affirmations might still help someone with low self-esteem, chiefly when the statement is modest enough to be believed.

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