Running Head: DEFENSIVE CONVICTION AS EMOTION REGULATION
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation: Goal Mechanisms and Interpersonal Implications
1
Denise C. Marigold, 2Ian McGregor, & 1Mark P. Zanna
1
University of Waterloo
2
York University
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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In this chapter we describe research on defensive conviction as a reaction to personal
uncertainty and other poignant self-threats. We argue that uncertainty and self-threats are
aversive because they block important personal goals, and that some people cope by
exaggerating conviction about alternative goals and ideals. Goal-related, neuropsychological
mechanisms are suggested for how such seemingly compensatory conviction can serve as a form
of emotion regulation: Approaching a compelling goal or ideal may inhibit the distress that
ensues when another meaningful goal is blocked. This mechanism has been proposed in recent
articles (McGregor, 2006a, 2006b; McGregor, Gailliot, Vasquez, & Nash, in press), but here we
delve into it further and discuss some unpublished supporting data. We also highlight the
implications of defensive conviction for interpersonal relationships, which have not been
discussed elsewhere. People often pursue relationships as goals and thus relationships may be a
source of conviction after threat. Alternatively, relationships may suffer if conviction is focused
on domains that are not shared with relationship partners.
Most people have broad, important goals toward which they strive in their daily behavior.
These may include, for example, goals to be correct and competent, to have a coherent identity,
and to have close and satisfying relationships. According to Carver and Scheier (1998;
elaborated from Powers, 1973), these kinds of broad goals or “system concepts” are the highest
ideals and values about what to approach. Hierarchically nested under idealized system concepts
are more specific principles and values, and then lower-level behavioral goals. The key to this
chapter is that ideals and values are kinds of abstract goals that can be promoted by pursuing
lower level behavioral goals. For example, studying hard for an exam would be one way to
approach the goal of competence; doing something nice for one’s partner promotes the goal of
being loving and lovable. One may even “approach” a high level goal simply by fostering
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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conviction for it. From this perspective, system concepts and value principles are crucial for selfregulation, and are thus of intense motivational significance because they act as “self-guides”
(Van Hook & Higgins, 1988) for enactment of the pyramid of subordinate behavioral goals.1
Knowing how to prioritize self-guides can be a challenge, however. Conflict between
valued selves is aversive (Van Hook & Higgins, 1988), and abstract quandaries about relative
value cannot easily be solved by appeals to objective facts. People require interpersonal
validation for setting such priorities (cf. Festinger, 1954; Hardin & Higgins, 1996; Shah,
Kruglanski, & Thompson, 1998). Accordingly, consensual ideals promoted through groupidentifications and shared cultural meanings have powerful motivational significance and serve
as pivotal guides for self-regulation. Members of one’s cultural group are a primary source of
social comparison information and validation of personal beliefs and values (Festinger, 1954;
Shah et al., 1998). Close relationship partners, too, can be a ready resource for construction and
validation of personal identities (Swann, 1987; Swann & Predmore, 1985) and can shape
movement toward one’s ideal self (Drigotas, Rusbult, Wieselquist, & Whitton, 1999).
Because of their vital bolstering function, cultural or relational sources of consensus may
be as crucial as the convictions that they support. Indeed, the research that will be described in
this chapter indicates that when high-level self-goals are threatened by uncertainty or other selfthreats, people defensively exaggerate seemingly compensatory sources of both conviction
(certainty that one’s opinions are correct) and consensus (certainty that other people agree with
one’s opinions) with equivalent fervor.2 For example, they exaggerate conviction for attitudes
about social issues after stewing in uncertainty about a personal dilemma or troubled close
relationship (McGregor & Marigold, 2003; McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001), they
inflate estimates of consensus for their social issue opinions following a failure experience
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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(McGregor, Nail, Marigold, & Kang, 2005), and they display more ingroup bias than usual
following mortality salience, uncertainty, and system injustice threats (McGregor et al., 2001;
McGregor et al., in press; McGregor et al., 2005). Why do people react to uncertainty and other
self-threats with apparently compensatory conviction and consensus?
Goals Disruption and Uncertainty
Our understanding of why goal-threats cause defensive conviction and consensus is based
in Jeffrey Gray’s work on the neuropsychology of anxiety and the behavioral inhibition system
(BIS; Gray & McNaughton, 2000). The BIS supports effective goal pursuit by raising anxiety
and discouraging persistence at a compromised goal. BIS activation following any goal
disruption is essentially a state of aroused uncertainty. When the BIS is activated, approach
motivation remains prominent, but inhibition processes join in to create a motivational conflict.
BIS anxiety and arousal are activated in scenarios in which an animal does not clearly need to
immediately fight or flee from a threat. Clear fight, flight, and panic responses are mediated by a
different brain system (Gray & McNaughton, 2000). Other unequivocal avoidance states are also
mediated by different brain systems. For example, the BIS is active when rats smell a predator,
but not when they are confronted with an actual predator (Gray & McNaughton, 2000).With BIS
activation the animal remains in an inhibited approach orientation, with aroused attention
vigilantly focused for awareness of threat cues, solutions, or tenable alternative goals. When the
“alarm system” is alerted in this way, threatening cues attract indordinate perceptual attention,
and elicit more intense emotional reactions than usual (Van den Bos, Euwema, Poortfliet, &
Maas, in press; Van den Bos et al., 2007; Van den Bos, Van Ameidje, & Van Gorp, 2006). The
anxious arousal also translates into an invigoration of efforts toward the focal goal, until it is
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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either accomplished, until flight becomes clearly necessary, or until an alternative goal pursuit is
unequivocally re-engaged (Klinger, 1975).
It is easy to see the adaptiveness of such a process for simple goals. If a hungry rat
running toward food were to encounter an insurmountable obstacle, it would be adaptive for the
rat to inhibit and disengage from its initial plan, scan for alternative routes, and then engage an
alternative plan that skirted the obstacle. Vertebrates with lesions to brain areas related to the BIS
fail to disengage from blocked goals. Various anti-anxiety medications have the same effect as
these lesions. They alleviate anxiety associated with uncertainty and disrupted goals, but they
can also compromise appropriate disengagement (Gray & McNaughton, 2000).
Humans share the same BIS circuitry as rats, and our prefrontal cortex has elaborate
projections to and from the BIS. These circuits allow for abstract, conceptual goals and ideals to
be regulated the same way concrete goals are, by basic BIS processes. The main argument of this
chapter is that the tendency for humans to exaggerate idealized convictions and consensus
responses after various self-threats can be explained by the mechanics of the BIS. Our argument
is rooted in Carver and Scheier’s (1998; cf. Powers, 1973) depiction of ideal system concepts,
which map onto core values, relationship ideals, and cultural meanings, as high-level abstract
goals. Such abstract ideals and self-guides are not only motivationally super-ordinate, they are
also resistant to habituation, disillusionment, or factual refutation (cf. Klinger, 1977). As such,
when humans have their BIS activated by important goal disruptions, they can reliably turn
toward the alternative goals of ideological conviction and consensus to deactivate the BIS. It is
important to note that the turn toward idealized conviction as an alternative goal does not
function as a substitute for the blocked goal, but rather as a beacon for reallocation of
motivational resources toward an unrelated and therefore wholly uncompromised alternative.
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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Accordingly, our main proposal is that ideological zeal is ubiquitously appealing for humans
because it can provide a reliable beacon to approach when one is mired in uncertainty or anxiety.
The defensive conviction reactions described in the following section represent this sort
of reactive tendency of some individuals to quell the anxiety of goal disruption by fervent
promotion of alternative goals and ideals in other domains. Doing so effectively re-engages the
sanguine processes related to focused and unfettered goal pursuit, and relieves the distress
associated with behavioral inhibition. Although we see uncertainty as a very poignant self-threat
(Van den Bos & Lind, this volume), in this chapter we subsume it with other self-threats like
failure, separation, and mortality salience, under the rubric of compromised high-level goals. The
similarity of defensive responses to all these threats has prompted us to group them together in
this manner (McGregor, 2006a). It is possible that these other self-threats also operate through
uncertainty, but that point remains to be clarified in future research, and is not critical to the
present argument.3 For our purposes, following Gray and McNaughton (2000), we will equate
goal blockage and uncertainty as psychologically equivalent because they both activate the BIS
and produce anxious discomfort.
Defensive Conviction and Consensus
A now considerable amount of research in our labs has shown that when goals are
jeopardized by uncertainty or by some other threatening situation (e.g., a conflict with a partner
threatens the goal for a close relationship; poor performance on a school task threatens an
achievement goal), some people turn toward seemingly defensive sources of conviction and
consensus. In some studies, a goal threat condition was created by reminding participants about
an uncertain situation in their own lives. For example, after ruminating about an unsolved
personal dilemma, conflicting life choices, or a troubled close relationship, participants had more
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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conviction about their self-concepts, values, personal projects, relationships, and attitudes about
social issues (Marigold & Holmes, 2006; McGregor et al., 2001, Studies 1 and 2; McGregor &
Marigold, 2003, Studies 1-3). In other studies, a goal threat condition was created in the lab. For
example, after being asked to summarize a confusing excerpt from an advanced statistics
textbook, or to imagine living in a foreign country separated from all their loved ones,
undergraduate students inflated the extremity, conviction, and estimates of consensus for their
opinions on issues like capital punishment, abortion, the US invasion of Iraq, and suicide
bombing (McGregor et al., 2005, Studies 1 and 2; McGregor & Jordan, 2007). They also
expressed greater determination to succeed at their most identity-defining goals (McGregor &
Jordan, 2006).
Another threat that has been studied extensively is mortality salience (Greenberg,
Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1997). This is particularly relevant to our conceptualization of
defensive conviction as a response to blocked goals, as death is the ultimate goal disruptor.
Concrete plans and most high-level goals that people pursue in daily life are terminated by death.
Goals for certainty and understanding are undermined (despite sometimes fervent hopes, no one
knows for sure what happens after death), and goals for self-worth, love, and inclusion are
rendered absurd upon consideration of one’s personal transience. In our lab, mortality salience
has been shown to increase identity-seeking, communal construal of identity, and determination
to succeed at idiosyncratic personal goals (McGregor et al., 2001, Study 4; McGregor et al, in
press, Study 2). In numerous other studies, mortality salience has been shown to promote
ingroup favoritism, outgroup stereotyping, self-esteem striving (Solomon, Greenberg, &
Pyszczynski, 2004), and motivation to develop relationships (Mikulincer, Florian, &
Hirschberger, 2004). It seems that when goals are imagined to be blocked by death, people cling
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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more strongly to the same kinds of alternative goals and ideals that they turn to after other selfthreats: convictions, self-esteem, relationships, and groups (see McGregor, 2006a, for review).
Further support for this interpretation comes from a recent study showing that mortality salience
increased some people’s intentions to pursue personal goals (i.e., made them more likely to list
as upcoming activities those that are in service of their long-term goals; Landau, Greenberg, &
Kosloff, this volume).
Related research paradigms also show that self-threats cause a variety of proud and
idealistic “fluid compensatory” responses (cf. Steele, 1988). For example, uncertainty increases
ingroup identification (Hogg, 2007) and failure increases outgroup derogation (Crocker,
Thompson, McGraw, & Ingerman, 1987). Several theorists have noted the apparent
substitutability of various defenses in response to self-threats and have explained these
phenomena in terms of maintaining meaning, self-esteem, and security. In their “meaning
maintenance model,” Heine, Proulx, and Vohs (2006) argue that when people’s sense of meaning
is threatened by diverse threats, they reaffirm alternative sources of meaning. Tesser (2000)
concluded from his self-evaluation maintenance research that when an aspect of the self is
threatened, people maintain equanimity by affirming a different animal in their “self-zoo.” Hart,
Shaver, and Goldenberg (2005) recently proposed a tripartite security system, based on evidence
that close relationships, self-esteem, and cultural belief systems provide alternative means of
boosting security and reducing anxiety about personal vulnerabilities, including death. They
showed that threats to one component of the system elicit apparently compensatory defenses
from the other components (e.g., attachment threats produced worldview and self-esteem
defenses, and worldview or self-esteem threats produced attachment defenses). Similarly, system
justification research shows that people defensively cling to conservative ideologies in the face
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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of situational threats or dispositional vulnerabilities (Jost, Glaser, Kruglanksi, & Sulloway, 2003;
Kay & Gaucher, 2006).
All of these perspectives are consistent with our view of defensive conviction. In every
case, various self-threats cause a more tenacious adherence to some alternative personal agenda
or ideal. We propose that basic BIS processes may underlie all of these models. When people’s
important goals are disrupted, anxious vigilance is relieved by zealous promotion of reliable
idealized goals. Emerging evidence about the roles of explicit and implicit self-esteem support
this emotion-regulation view of defensive conviction.
Who Is Most Defensive? The Roles of Explicit and Implicit Self-Esteem
A recent unpublished study (Marigold & Holmes, 2006) will illustrate how explicit selfesteem (i.e., measured with self-report scales) typically moderates defensive conviction reactions
to threats. In this study, 83 undergraduate psychology students were randomly assigned to either
an identity threat or control condition. Participants in the threat condition were told to “Think
about what your life will be like in five to seven years, some time after you have graduated from
the University of Waterloo.” They were asked to list two different career options and describe
the interests, values, and goals that might be given up by pursuing one over the other. They
repeated this procedure for places they might live in order to fully immerse them in uncertainty
about the future. Participants in the control condition received a modified version of this task.
They were asked to complete the same procedure for someone else, specifically, a celebrity who
was in the news often. They were asked to imagine what this person’s life would be like in five
to seven years, and they completed materials parallel to the threat condition.
For the main dependent variables, participants rated the intimacy of their two closest
friendships: How positively their friends regarded them, and how understood they felt by their
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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friends. They also rated how certain they were that they would still be close to each of these
friends five years from now and beyond, which invokes the ideal of true friendship. Results
showed that all threatened participants reported more intimacy in their close friendships than did
control participants. Importantly, however, only participants with high self-esteem exaggerated
confidence about the ideal of true friendship with increased longevity ratings in the threat
condition.
This finding is consistent with our previous research on reactions to uncertainty and other
threats as a function of explicit self-esteem (McGregor et al., 2005; McGregor et al., in press;
McGregor & Marigold, 2003). In this previous research, individuals with high self-esteem have
consistently been most inclined toward defensive promotion of zealous ideals after various
threats (see also McGregor, 2006a). Other research suggests that it comes more naturally for high
self-esteem individuals to mount approach-related defenses to threats. People with high selfesteem tend to be dispositionally approach-motivated (Heimpel, Elliot, & Wood, 2006) and
promotion-focused (Leonardelli, Lakin, & Arkin, in press), which orients them toward
identifying ideal goals and moving towards desired outcomes (Amodio, Shah, Sigelman, Brazy,
& Harmon-Jones, 2004). As well, promotion focus increases self-esteem strivings (Leonardelli &
Lakin, this volume).
Our proposed link between high explicit self-esteem and defensive approach-motivation
is further supported by a recent study indicating individuals with high self-esteem, but not those
with low self-esteem, reacted to both mortality salience and uncertainty threats with heightened
zeal for their most central personal goals (McGregor & Jordan, 2006). Moreover, the same study
showed that the individuals with high self-esteem reacted to these threats with a pattern of brain
activity that is characteristic of approach motivation (i.e., relative left frontal activation; to be
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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discussed later in this chapter). Similarly, other researchers have shown that individuals with
high but not low explicit self-esteem responded to mortality salience with increased promotionfocus; they were more like to pursue an opportunity to demonstrate excellence despite a
substantial risk of failure (Landau, Greenberg, & Kosloff, this volume).
In addition to evidence that high explicit self-esteem is a predisposition toward defensive
conviction reactions to threats, low implicit self-esteem appears to be a personal vulnerability
that also inclines people toward defensive conviction. Low implicit self-esteem, as assessed by
the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald & Farnham, 2000), measures experiential, less
consciously elaborated associations of self with goodness. It is typically not correlated with
explicit self-esteem. In three published studies we have found that various threats cause people
with low implicit self-esteem, but not high implicit self-esteem, to exaggerate conviction,
consensus, and extremity about ideological opinions (McGregor & Marigold, 2003, Study 3;
McGregor et al., 2005, Study 1; McGregor & Jordan, 2007). Moreover, in two studies,
participants with low implicit self-esteem were particularly likely to react to a self-threat with
exaggerated zeal for their core personal goals, and also with patterns of brain activity
characteristic of approach-motivation (McGregor & Jordan, 2006). These findings help to
explain why, in two published studies, we have found three-way interaction effects with most
defensive conviction among threatened participants with the combination of low implicit selfesteem and high explicit self-esteem (McGregor & Marigold, 2003, Study 3; McGregor et al.,
2005, Study 1). Such individuals are not only dispositionally vulnerable to threats, but are also
dispositionally inclined toward promotion of ideals. Our findings are consistent with
foundational research which shows that individuals with high explicit self-esteem and low
implicit self-esteem are particularly prone toward various forms of defensiveness, including
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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dissonance reduction and prejudicial reactions to outgroup members (Jordan, Spencer, & Zanna,
2005; Jordan, Spencer, Zanna, Hoshino-Browne, & Correll, 2003; Logel, Spencer, Wood,
Holmes, & Zanna, 2006). These findings for explicit and implicit self-esteem are also consistent
with an emotion-regulation view of defensive zeal.
Defensive Conviction and Consensus as Emotion Regulation
Our proposal that defensive conviction is a kind of promotion-focused emotionregulation4 is supported by evidence that people with high explicit self-esteem, who are most
likely to engage in defensive conviction, are most motivated to repair their moods (Heimpel,
Wood, Marshall, & Brown, 2002; Smith & Petty, 1995). They also tend to be more focused on
the promotion and approach of ideal incentives (Heimpel, Elliot, & Wood, 2006; Leonardelli,
Lakin, & Arkin, in press), particularly when threatened (Cavallo, Fitzsimons, & Holmes, 2006;
McGregor et al., in press).
In line with these findings on promotion focus, and consistent with the foundational work
on the operation of the BIS, one promising explanation for how conviction relieves threats
relates to Higgins’s (2005) theory of regulatory fit. Higgins has found that experiences seem
most compelling when they resonate with individuals’ current regulatory focus. When
individuals are dispositionally or situationally promotion-focused (i.e., oriented towards ideals
and goals for hopes, aspirations, growth, and accomplishment), they overvalue phenomena
related to approaching ideals and incentives, and undervalue phenomena related to preventing or
avoiding unwanted outcomes. In our view, a corollary of Higgins’ theory of regulatory fit is that
experiences should seem less compelling when they do not fit with active regulatory focus. That
is, in a promotion-focused state, the distress of prevention-related anxiety arising from blocked
goals should seem more remote. Indeed, some theorists have proposed that approach-motivation,
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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which is strongly related to promotion focus (Amodio et al., 2004) is a basic form of emotion
regulation in humans and even in rats (Jackson et al., 2003; Sullivan, 2004; Tomarken & Keener,
1998). Such “offensive” strategies (McGregor, 2006a) may be superior to defensive attempts to
simply suppress or distract oneself from unwanted thoughts, which can backfire and cause
rebound hyperaccessibility of the unwanted thoughts (Wegner, 1994; cf. Greenberg, Arndt,
Schimel, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 2001).
Accordingly, a number of studies have found that expressions of personal ideals take
people’s minds off of threat-related thoughts. In one study (McGregor, 2006b), participants
ruminated on a personal dilemma about which they were uncertain. Next, participants assigned
to the “value conviction” condition were asked to write about their highest value and describe
how they act consistently with it. Control participants wrote about their least important value and
why it might be important to someone else. Participants in the value conviction condition later
rated their personal dilemmas as less subjectively salient (i.e., less important and preoccupying)
than did participants who were not given an opportunity to express value conviction.
Interestingly, this effect was most pronounced on the last three items of the eight-item subjective
salience scale. That is, the threat-muffling effects of conviction were actually strongest when the
threat had been made highly accessible by repeated reminders. Thus, it seems that conviction
does not simply function as a distracter, but rather it allows people to motivationally disengage
from preoccupation with an accessible threat.
Related studies have found that expressing conviction for idealistic opinions, romantic
relationships, and self-worth also functions to relieve preoccupation with distressing thoughts
(McGregor, 2004; McGregor, 2006b; McGregor & Marigold, 2003, Study 4).5 Similarly, terror
management researchers have found that defensive expressions of consensual worldviews after
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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mortality salience serve to decrease the prominence of death-related thoughts (Greenberg, et al.,
2001). Thus, avoidance-related anxiety arising from blocked goals does seem to be effectively
reduced by promoting alternative goals and ideals with zealous enthusiasm.
One might wonder whether people’s initial response to a blocked goal would be to
increase effort and persistence at it. Indeed such anxious invigoration is the norm, at least
immediately after the first signs of goal disruption, while anxiety is still manageable (Klinger,
1975). But when people begin to doubt their ability to overcome the obstacle, and anxiety has
become highly uncomfortable, they are more likely to disengage from the goal, especially if an
alternative is salient. In our model, we propose that initial invigoration is followed by withdrawal
of motivational resources from the active pursuit of the blocked goal and reinvestment (via
compensatory conviction) in the active pursuit of alternative goals (and convictions) in other life
domains. Our research to date has not programmatically addressed the time course of
compensatory conviction. However, based on related research we speculate that it would be
more evident when there is a delay between the threat and goal conviction opportunity. Other
researchers have found a delay/distraction task to be necessary to elicit defensive reactions
following uncertainty threats (Wichman, Brunner, & Weary, 2006) and mortality salience
(Greenberg, Arndt, Simon, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 2000). Accordingly, we have always
included a delay in our experiments.
Future research should programmatically address the time course of compensatory
conviction. It may be that there is an initially increased anxious perseverance at the blocked goal,
during which time compensatory convictions are muted, followed by a period of compensatory
conviction during which time concern about the blocked goal is muted (cf., Klinger, 1975). In
our studies so far, participants have never been given the opportunity to demonstrate increased
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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resolve to overcome the blocked goal, but this could certainly be investigated in future research.
For example, after a failure threat in which undergraduate psychology students are asked to
summarize a highly complex and confusing statistical passage (shown to elicit a compensatory
conviction response; McGregor et al., 2005), participants could be asked in another context about
the desirability of signing up for a free statistics workshop offered by the department. The option
could be offered immediately following the threat or after a delay. If threatened participants
indeed showed greater interest in signing up for the workshop, particularly when asked
immediately after the threat as opposed to after a delay, this would provide support for the idea
that there is indeed an initial phase of invigorated goal perseverance before the compensatory
conviction. Such a finding could provide an intriguing goal-regulation account for the divergent
proximal (e.g., denial) and distal (i.e., compensatory) defenses that have been found in response
to mortality salience threats (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999).
The Neuropsychology of Compensatory Conviction
At a neuropsychological level, some insight into the appeal of conviction as an emotion
regulation strategy can be gleaned from research on the dynamics of relative cerebral
hemisphericity. A review by Martin and Shrira (2005) showed that across a number of studies,
perceiving and ruminating about experientially threatening phenomena was associated with
relative right frontal cerebral hemisphere activation, which is also associated with avoidance
motivation. Relative left hemisphere activation, on the other hand, was associated with value
affirmations, stereotyping, self-reported purpose and meaning in life, as well as approach
motivation. Promotion focus (which predicts approach-related behaviors; Amodio et al., 2004)
has also been shown to be positively related to EEG activity in the left frontal cortex and
negatively related to EEG activity in the right frontal cortex (Amodio et al., 2004). Thus, zealous
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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ideals may serve to shift processing from right-hemisphere-mediated anxious rumination about
threats to left-hemisphere-mediated approach-focus and insulation from threats. Indeed, chronic
relative left hemisphere activation has been associated with attenuated startle responses after
unpleasant stimuli, a dispositional tendency towards repression of negative thoughts, and greater
happiness and meaning in life (Jackson et al., 2003; Tomarken & Davidson, 1994; Urry et al.,
2004).
Other evidence suggesting that people may mask threats by defensively engaging lefthemisphere-mediated approach motivation comes from research on anxiety. Threat and anxiety
experiences are associated with relative right hemisphere activation (Friedman & Forster, 2005,
Study 3; Lee et al., 2004; Nitschke, Heller, Palmieri, & Miller, 1999; Tucker, Roth, Arneson, &
Buckingham, 1977), but dispositionally anxious people actually show chronic relative left
hemisphere activation (see Heller, Nitschke, & Miller, 1998 for review). Dispositional insecurity
is also associated with conservative and closed patterns of thinking (Jost et al., 2003), which are
relatively left-hemisphere mediated (Martin & Shrira, 2005). Together, these finding are
consistent with the idea that dispositionally anxious people may preemptively occupy themselves
with patterns of thinking and acting that prime left hemisphere processes in order to minimize
right-hemisphere-mediated anxious experience. Indeed, there is preliminary evidence that lefthemisphere-mediated approach motivation processes actively inhibit right-hemisphere-mediated
avoidance motivation processes (Amodio et al., 2004; Drevets & Raichle, 1998; Jackson et al.,
2003; Schiff & Bassel, 1996; Tomarken & Keener, 1998).
Thus, when important goals are blocked, zealously promoting ideal values, goals, groups,
attitudes, and relationships with conviction may be rewarding because doing so can reliably
inhibit vigilant preoccupation with the threatened goal through asymmetrical hemisphere
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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activation (see also McGregor, 2006a). Accordingly, one recent study showed that after being
confronted with personal uncertainty or mortality salience (which should be processed in the
right hemisphere; Martin & Shrira, 2005), people with high explicit self-esteem (who, recall, are
most invested in mood repair and most inclined toward defensive zeal) expressed more
determination for their core personal goals, and showed an increase in relative left hemisphere
activation (McGregor & Jordan, 2006).
Consequences for Interpersonal Relationships
Most research on the interpersonal consequences of defensive conviction and consensus
has focused on implications for relations within and between groups. Self-threats like uncertainty
and mortality salience have been shown to increase conviction for one’s own opinions and values
and decrease tolerance for the opinions and values of outgroup members (see Hogg, 2007;
McGregor, 2004; and Solomon et al., 2004, for reviews). To the extent that people are
defensively cleaving to their ingroups to bolster their ideals and meanings, perspective-taking
and dialogue between rival groups will be impeded. The threats experienced during inter-group
conflicts may further inflame each group’s defense of their worldview and the dismissal of the
other’s. Furthermore, intergroup anger is an approach-related phenomenon (Harmon-Jones &
Sigelman, 2001), which may be recruited to further activate approach-related processes for
relieving distress.
Given that close relationships are a core source of uncertainty and conflict, and are also
central to people’s high-level goals for belongingness, meaning, validation, and self-worth (see
McGregor et al., 2001), similar processes may play out in the realm of close relationships as
well. People may defensively enhance close relationships that support the self, but become
defensively closed and hostile toward relationships that compete with salient goals. In this final
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section, we review some research and speculate about the implications of defensive conviction
for close relationships, for better and for worse.
On the positive side, relationships may be the very goal or ideal that people fix their
determination on after they have been threatened. In this way, defensive conviction may bolster
established relationships. It may also allow people to hopefully exaggerate the potential of a new
relationship in its early stages, when trusting in a partner’s caring and responsiveness to needs
requires a leap of faith (Murray, Holmes, & Collins, 2006; Sorrentino, Holmes, Hanna & Sharp,
1995). Bolstering such faith could encourage people to commit to the relationship and behave in
ways that foster security and closeness. For example, they might be more likely disclose selfdoubts and seek support, excuse or forgive partner transgressions, and view the relationship in
the best possible light (Murray et al., 2006).
Research has shown that when faced with a threat that is unrelated to relationships,
people do often turn to their relationships for solace. In numerous studies, mortality salience has
been shown to promote more communal identifications, greater willingness to initiate social
interactions, a preference for love styles that foster intimate and committed relationships, and
more commitment to current relationships (e.g., McGregor et al. 2001, Studies 2 and 4; see
Mikulincer et al., 2004, for a review). The urge to affiliate is so strong after mortality salience, in
fact, that people become more open to forming relationships with others they would not usually
consider suitable: They show greater willingness to relax their typical mate requirements
(Hirschberger, Florian, & Mikulincer, 2002) and prefer to sit with a worldview-threatening group
than sit alone (Wisman & Koole, 2003).
Although most people might seek out relationships when threatened, there are individual
differences in the way they do so. As discussed earlier, one variable that often moderates
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
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defensive conviction findings is explicit self-esteem. It is high, and not low self-esteem
individuals who are most often willing to express increased confidence in their self-concepts,
attitudes, and groups after threat (McGregor et al., 2005; McGregor & Marigold, 2003). In the
study described earlier, in which people rated their quality of their close friendships after an
identity threat manipulation, it was only people with high self-esteem who became more
optimistic about true friendship when threatened (Marigold & Holmes, 2006). Similarly, in the
work of Murray and colleagues, it was only for high self-esteem people that threats fueled
greater commitment to romantic relationships (see Murray et al., 2006, for a review).
Conviction about relationships may largely be self-fulfilling and increase relationship
quality, but these defensive processes can also have some negative consequences. People might
foreclose too early on inappropriate and frustrating relationships which are difficult to maintain.
On the other hand, people who have little tolerance for uncertainty about their world (i.e.,
certainty-oriented individuals) or about relationship partners in particular (i.e., destiny theorists),
are often too quick to dismiss natural feelings of ambivalence and end a potentially rewarding
relationship before giving it a chance to develop (Knee, 1998; Sorrentino et al., 1995).
There are other important ways in which people might respond to self-threats and
manifest conviction in a manner that is problematic for their close relationships. Some research
suggests that self-threats can decrease situational perspective-taking and empathy. For example,
whereas priming attachment security increased empathic responses (Mikulincer et al., 2001), and
compassion and helping (Mikulincer, Shaver, Gillath, & Nitzberg, 2005), an attachment threat (a
forecast of a lifetime of social exclusion) led to decreased empathy with another person’s
physical or emotional suffering (DeWall & Baumeister, 2006). Mortality salience has been
shown to increase self-serving attributions for successes and failures (Mikulincer & Florian,
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
20
2002), which may suggest that threatened individuals would be less likely to take the perspective
of others or notice their contributions.
In our own research, we have shown that various self-threats (e.g., failure, separation)
cause exaggerated conviction and consensus estimates for personal beliefs about unrelated social
issues and a failure to recognize the validity of alternative perspectives (McGregor & Marigold,
2003; McGregor et al., 2005). For example, after just reviewing a list of 10 common and diverse
opinions about a social issue, defensive participants responded to a threat by inflating social
consensus estimates for their own opinion to over 70%. The assumption that most others agree
with one’s point of view could make one less likely to listen to and consider partners’
expressions of their views. In fact, in one study people with high self-esteem were seen as more
arrogant and rude after an ego threat, and were consequently rated as less likeable (Heatherton &
Vohs, 2000). Being primed to powerfully pursue goal-directed behavior can also lead people to
act in antisocial ways, as one’s personal agenda takes precedence over the consideration of
others (Galinksy, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003). At a neuropsychological level, tenacious approach
motivation and defensiveness have been associated with relative increases in left hemisphere
processes (Martin & Shrira, 2005; McGregor & Jordan, 2006). It is right hemisphere activation,
however, that seems more closely associated with social perspective-taking and sympathy
(Decety & Chaminade, 2003; Heberlein, Adophs, Pennebaker, & Tranel, 2003; Henry, 1993;
Hird & Kirsner, 2003). Thus, increased relative left hemisphere activation after threat may
impede interpersonal sensitivity.
The goal literature provides some support for the idea that approach-motivated pursuit of
self-focused goals (which we have shown to be a defensive conviction type of response to selfthreats) sometimes leads people to downplay relationship goals, and consequently “block out”
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
21
relationship partners. To ensure that a goal of current focus receives sufficient attention,
alternative pursuits are often put aside. Goal shielding theory assumes that this kind of inter-goal
inhibition is applied automatically and without conscious awareness. Indeed, research has shown
that simply priming a goal-related word inhibits recognition of alternative goals, particularly
when one is highly committed to the focal goal. The inhibitory effect is more pronounced among
individuals high in anxiety and need for closure (Shah, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2002), which
are states created by self-threats (Dechesne & Kruglanski, 2004; Gray & McNaughton, 2000).
Such goal-shielding processes may have long-term effects: Successful pursuit of career-related
goals might come at the expense of inhibiting relationship goals (Shah et al., 2002). Furthermore,
prolonged inhibition may undermine one’s interest in, or commitment to, the inhibited goals.
Chronic inhibition of relationship goals may not be very common, as several of our studies
showed that defensive conviction was particularly pronounced for relationship goals and
identities (Marigold & Holmes, 2006; McGregor et al., 2001, Studies 2 & 4). However, if the
threat actually comes from a relationship, people will likely want to promote ideals in a different
domain.
Goal pursuit may also influence individuals’ feelings about their relationship partners in a
more direct way. When actively engaged in goal pursuit, people automatically evaluate other
people and objects that facilitate their current goal more positively (Ferguson & Bargh, 2004;
Fitzsimons, 2006). Relationship partners vary in the extent to which they facilitate a person’s
goals. Consequently, when a specific goal is primed, people feel closer to, see more importance
in, are more motivated to approach, and more likely to intend to spend time with instrumental
relationship partners. Conversely, they are more likely to avoid relationship partners than hinder
their focal goal (Fitzsimons, 2006). Eagerly pursuing personal goals and ideals as a way of
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
22
coping with self-threats may thus lead people to inhibit thoughts of, and decrease commitment
to, relationship partners who might interfere with goal pursuit.
Summary and Future Directions
In this chapter we have suggested that uncertainty and other self-threats like mortality
salience, failure, and separation cause anxiety because they block important, high-level self-goals
and activate the BIS. One response is to eagerly promote alternative, often idealized goals in the
form of convictions about unrelated opinions, values, identities, and relationships. Idealized
convictions are appealing in response to threats because they focus on ideal goals that are
relatively immune to the kinds of frictions and frustrations that can block more concrete goals
and cause anxious BIS activation. One can easily fail a test or lose at love, but moral ideals about
Truth, Love, or Goodness can be more stable and resistant to evidence. Turning to such ideals in
the face of anxiety may accomplish a kind of defensive approach motivation whereby activation
of unequivocal approach processes inhibits avoidance processes. Individuals are thereby
insulated from prolonged preoccupation with threatening experiences. Although this kind of
motivational insulation certainly feels good for the threatened individual, it may negatively affect
relationship partners who are shielded from consideration by the goal-driven individual. On the
other hand, relationships may serve as a source of idealization and thus be strengthened as threats
increase conviction about them.
In future research we plan to look more closely at how the processes outlined in this
chapter can affect relationships. Although from one perspective defensive approach-motivation
reactions to self-threats may be seen as a resilient form of active coping that serves the
individual’s emotion-regulation needs, it is also possible that it may take a toll on intimate and
peer relationships. Pairs of participants will be instructed to converse warmly with each other
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
23
after a self-threat. We expect that defensive individuals in the glow of their post-threat zeal will
report feeling connected and close to their interaction partners, and will assume that their
interaction went well and that their partners were enjoying them. We expect that objective
observers and the interaction partners might report a different experience, however. Lefthemisphere-charged, defensive resilience may come across as domineering, insensitive, and
unable to vulnerably engage in the tentative perspective-taking that intimacy requires. In related
research we plan to assess whether patterns of relative left-hemisphere EEG activity
characteristic of approach-motivation coincide with both zeal and with interpersonal
insensitivity.
If our defensive-approach-motivation hypothesis is solidly supported by the proposed
research, it could provide a parsimonious framework for integrating diverse theories of
defensiveness and emotion-regulation. Debates over the motivational primacy of uncertainty,
mortality salience, self-esteem, belongingness, control, security, or meaning could be dropped in
recognition of a basic, underlying process model that operates according to ancient goalregulation mechanisms shared by all vertebrates. Looming threats to any important goal—
whether for survival, success, or acceptance—cause anxious arousal and vigilance, until an
alternative, uncompromised goal is identified for whole-hearted pursuit. For humans, idealized
convictions are especially reliable in this regard because they are a kind of goal that cannot be
easily blocked. Even if one’s daily goals are a disaster, idealized Truth or Goodness can reliably
shimmer above the fray, as beacons for approach and insulation from concern with troubling
temporal reality.
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
24
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Authors’ Note
Denise C. Marigold & Mark P. Zanna, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, ON, Canada; Ian McGregor, Department of Psychology, York University Toronto,
ON, Canada.
Correspondence concerning this chapter should be addressed to Denise Marigold,
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo,
Ontario, Canada, N2L 3G1; or Ian McGregor, Department of Psychology, York University, 4700
Keele Street, Toronto, ON, Canada, M3J 1P3. Electronic mail: dcmarigo@uwaterloo.ca or
ianmc@yorku.ca.
Footnotes
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1
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Although Higgins talks about ought guides as well as ideal guides, the ideal guides are
most relevant here because future ideal selves are represented more abstractly (see also Liberman
& Trope, 1998).
2
There is some evidence that properties of the threat determine, at least is part, whether
people turn to conviction or consensus (or both). Threats that arise by highlighting existing
intrapersonal conflict seem to steer people towards conviction, whereas threats that are delivered
by the researcher during the experiment seem to steer people towards consenus (see McGregor,
2004, for a more detailed discussion).
3
Some researchers have found that uncertainty salience has a larger impact on people's
reactions than does mortality salience (Van den Bos & Lind, this volume; Van den Bos et al.,
2005). Other studies have found the opposite (Landau et al., this volume), or shown equal impact
(McGregor et al., 2001). We suspect these outcomes depend on several factors, including the
ways both uncertainty and mortality salience are manipulated, personality characteristics
(McGregor et al., 2005; McGregor & Jordan, 2007) and cultural influences in the population in
which the experiments are conducted (Van den Bos et al., 2007).
4
One argument against this emotion-regulation perspective might be that there is only
occasional evidence for emotional distress after the various kinds of self-threats that cause
defensive reactions (e.g., rejection, DeWall & Baumeister, 2006; mortality salience, Greenberg
et al., 2003). In most cases, this appears to be due to the fact that affect is measured immediately
after the threat, and some people’s first knee-jerk defense is thought-suppression (Greenberg et
al., 2001; Mikulincer, Dolev, & Shaver, 2004). In at least one study in which uncertainty-induced
affect was measured after a delay, after the suppressed threat had presumably had a chance to
Defensive Conviction as Emotion Regulation
37
rebound into accessibility, emotional consequences of the threat were more apparent (McGregor
et al., 2001, Study 1).
5
These findings are typically moderated by explicit self-esteem, such that only people
with high explicit self-esteem seem to be able to use their convictions to quell distressing
thoughts.