Self-affirmation theory in action

Today we had a brownbag talk by Bill Klein, a social psychologist who's worked on the connection between self-affirmation theory and health. This is potentially very useful for my job, since we're always hoping to find new ways to present health-relevant information to people in ways that encourage them to use it.

The gist is: Usually when you tell someone something potentially threatening, they tend to tune it out, downplay it, distance themselves from it, etc. If the person engages in a self-affirmation exercise first, however, then the opposite happens. People are then actively interested in hearing about potential threats, more attentive to such messages, and more likely to form intentions to act on the information.

( I see two main problems with using this research. )