One Size Fits All? A Systematic Study of Heterogeneous Effects of Self-Affirmation on Task Performance

Last registered on November 25, 2025

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

One Size Fits All? A Systematic Study of Heterogeneous Effects of Self-Affirmation on Task Performance

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0017302

Initial registration date

November 24, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

November 25, 2025, 8:13 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country

United States of America

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Sebastian Tonke

Affiliation

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Sebastian Schneiders

PI Affiliation

University of Cologne

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2025-11-26

End date

2025-12-07

Keywords

Behavior, Firms & Productivity, Gender, Labor

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

We examine whether the effectiveness of self-affirmation (SA) interventions varies across gender, socioeconomic status (SES), and ethnicity. Self-affirmation exercises are widely used in workplaces, (female) leadership programs, and educational settings to support resilience, reduce stress, and improve performance. However, the extent to which SA benefits different demographic groups remains an open question with significant implications for theory and practice. Typically, the benefits of self-affirmation interventions are found for disadvantaged, underrepresented or negatively stereotyped groups. We conduct a high-powered online experiment in which participants are randomly assigned to one of 16 versions of a SA exercise or an active control condition, followed by an incentivized real-effort task to measure productivity. We focus on heterogeneity by gender, SES, and ethnicity because these characteristics shape exposure to identity-related pressures, norms, and baseline levels of psychological threat, which are mechanisms directly linked to how SA is theorized to operate. Studying these moderators helps identify when and for whom such interventions are effective, thereby improving the design and scalability of self-affirmation interventions.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Schneiders, Sebastian and Sebastian Tonke. 2025. "One Size Fits All? A Systematic Study of Heterogeneous Effects of Self-Affirmation on Task Performance." AEA RCT Registry. November 25. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.17302-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

We estimate heterogeneous treatment effects (gender, SES, ethnicity) of self-affirmation interventions.

Our interventions comprise 16 different SA inductions (2x2x2x2 design). We compare the (i) type of self-affirmation (personal experiences vs. values), (ii) whether participants have to write about one value or experience or as many as they like (one vs. many), (iii) whether their anonymously written content is shared with the researchers or not (public vs. private), and (iv) whether the purpose of the self-affirmation exercise is revealed or not (purpose vs. no purpose). Subsequently, participants can work on a real-effort task with substantial piece-rate incentives, in which they have to count the number of zeros in a series of 3x10 matrices filled with randomly generated zeros and ones for a maximum of ten minutes.

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2025-11-26

Intervention End Date

2025-12-07

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Heterogeneous treatment effects in task performance with respect to gender, SES and ethnicity.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Lower SES is measured by education, income (job status), and subjective social status.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

- Psychological ease
- Psychological engagement
- Self-perceptions during the real-effort-task
- Mistakes, attempts, time, time per grid, breaks, and early exits in real-effort task

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

- Psychological ease: survey items (ease, difficulty, comfort of performing during writing exercise) and behavioral measures during the task (word count, time, valence of writing)
- Psychological engagement: survey items (meaningfulness and self-relevance of written content) and behavioral measures during the task (word count, time, valence of writing).
- Self-perceptions during the real-effort task: survey items (stress, focus, difficulty, confidence, mood)

Experimental Design

Subjects are randomly assigned to a control condition (2 versions) or a treatment condition (16 versions).

Our first set of hypotheses concerns whether there are heterogeneous treatment effects across gender, socioeconomic status (SES), and ethnicity for the pooled 16 treatment conditions.

1.⁠ ⁠Primary Heterogeneity Hypotheses:

H1 (Gender). Self-affirmation will yield larger improvements in task performance for women than for men.

H2 (Socioeconomic Status). Self-affirmation will yield larger improvements in task performance for lower-SES individuals than for higher-SES individuals.

H3 (Ethnicity). Self-affirmation will yield larger improvements in task performance for individuals from underrepresented or negatively stereotyped ethnic groups than for individuals from majority ethnic groups.

We further hypothesize that any observed heterogeneity in H1-H3 will be consistent with survey evidence from control-condition participants (e.g., women, lower-SES individuals, and minority ethnic groups reporting lower confidence or greater evaluative pressure during the task).

2.⁠ ⁠SA Dimension-Oriented Heterogeneous Treatment Effects

Our second set of hypotheses concerns whether the four design dimensions of the SA interventions systematically interact with participant characteristics. Specifically, we examine gender-, SES-, and ethnicity-based differences in responsiveness to variations in:

a. Affirmation type: personal experiences vs. personal values
b. Content breadth: writing about a single value/experience vs. multiple ones
c. Disclosure: content shared with researchers vs. kept private
d. Transparency: purpose of the exercise revealed vs. not revealed

H4 a-d (Design Interactions). The effectiveness of self-affirmation interventions will vary across demographic groups (gender, SES, ethnicity) depending on the content, breadth, disclosure, and transparency of the SA induction.

We expect that higher psychological ease and higher psychological engagement make SA interventions more effective. Hence, we hypothesize that any observed demographic differences in H4 will be consistent with changes in psychological ease (e.g., comfort, ease) and psychological engagement (e.g., self-relevance, meaningfulness) elicited in each SA intervention.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Participants will be randomly assigned to a treatment by Qualtrics. We stratify by sex.

Randomization Unit

Individual level

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

3200 (1600 women & 1600 men)

Sample size: planned number of observations

3200 (1600 women & 1600 men)

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

Active Controls: 400 subjects for each of the two controls (800 subjects).
SA variations: 150 subjects per treatment with 16 variations (2400 subjects).

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB