Helpful or unhelpful? Self-affirmation on challenge-confronting tendencies for students who fear being laughed at

• We test if self-affirmation can help high school students face challenging tasks.
• Self-affirmation helped low gelotophobia students confront a challenging task.
• Self-affirmation cannot help high gelotophobia students confront the task.
• Self-affirmation decreased high gelotophobia students' self-perceived ability.
• Self-affirmation may be unhelpful for students feeling threatened by challenges.

Studies suggest that self-affirmation interventions may help increase students' tendencies to confront challenges. However, we posited that self-affirmation cannot help students with higher levels of fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) confront challenges because it may lead them to accept negative information (feelings of threat) about their ability and decrease their perceptions of self-ability. In support of this hypothesis, Experiment 1 found that being attribute-affirmed enhanced the tendencies to confront a challenging task for junior high school students with low gelotophobia, but not for those with high gelotophobia. Experiment 2 revealed that being value-affirmed increased challenge-confronting tendencies for senior high school students with low gelotophobia. However, it decreased high gelotophobia students' challenge-confronting tendencies because it caused them to feel less capable of performing the task. Thus, self-affirmation, which may decrease high gelotophobia students' self-perceived ability in challenging situations, may be unhelpful or even harmful in motivating them to confront challenges.