Scroll through social media and you’ll quickly encounter phrases like “I am worthy” or “I choose happiness”. The tantalising promise is: repeat these positive affirmations often enough and you’ll be ...

I used to think positive affirmations, such as I am brave, were a silly New-Age concept that amounted to little more than wishful, magical thinking. Then I became a cognitive psychologist, and I ...

Self-affirmation theory was proposed by psychologist Claude Steele in the late 1980s and remains popular today. The theory suggests we have a deep desire to craft a personal narrative that we are ...