Self Affirmation Theory: A Key to Organisationally Enforced Incongruence

“The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” by laurakgibbs is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Self Affirmation Theory – A Key to Organisationally Enforced Incongruence

Organisational incongruence, where destructive actions within an organisation become reinterpreted as indicators of success, reflects deeper psychological and social dynamics that can result in this false narrative being organisationally enforced, preventing that organisation, and it’s social community, from seeing those very damaging “side-effects”.

A clear example of this can be seen, when one looks at the universal service of Help-Desk provision, and how this has been dehumanised, and made into a toxic, stress causing run-around for the service using community. Yet, within each of those affected organisations, this is seen as the result of a series of entirely beneficial upgrades. No amount of customer complaint’s it seems, can prevent that particular tanker, from turning.

One compelling lens to understand this phenomenon is Claude Steele’s Self-Affirmation Theory (SAT). Initially developed to explain individual responses to threats to self-integrity.

Self-integrity is the global self-image of being “good, competent, moral, adaptive, and in control of life outcomes.”, it could be equated to Roger’s self-concept, but could be seen as encompassing the ideal self.

SAT provides critical insights into how entire organisations may collectively defend damaging patterns as projected virtues, often using false moralistic narratives in pursuit of continued Organisational Thriving, by “shooting itself”, and it’s community service users, “in the foot”.

Understanding Self-Affirmation Theory

Self-Affirmation Theory posits that humans possess a fundamental need to maintain self-integrity, which is a global sense of being good, competent, and morally adequate. When confronted with threats, such as criticism, failure, or negative feedback, individuals often respond defensively, distorting information to protect their self-image.

However, through self-affirmation; reflecting on personally meaningful values unrelated to the threat, a person can broaden their perspective, accept threatening information non-defensively, and maintain overall self-worth. This mechanism has been demonstrated in numerous experiments, including studies where individuals facing criticism or Stereotype threat improved outcomes after affirming core values.

Neurologically, self-affirmation activates brain regions associated with self-processing and reward while reducing activity in anxiety-related areas. This biological basis reinforces the theory’s explanatory power in how people psychologically manage threats.

Incongruent Application of Self-Affirmations

This process of self-affirmation, however, can serve to reinforce incongruent, externally introjected values of false authenticity, if, indeed, these false values are assumed to apply to that individual. This is because, constant repetition will set and condition an individuals masking rules, to accept, long-term, that incongruent intellectual position. This process has often been called normalisation.

SAT recognises these in the term “social norms“, and it underline a fundamental incongruence in societal thinking; that we are not, after all, unique individuals.

Applying SAT to Organisational Incongruence

Organisations are composed of individuals whose psychological processes collectively produce culture and practice. When micro-level incongruences – such as errors, self-sabotage, or failing policies arise, then that organisation may engage in collective self-affirmation to preserve its institutional self-integrity.

For example, in cases where a company’s transparency policies lead to excessive citation of inaccurate data, the organisation may ritualize these flawed practices as “scientific rigor” or “verifiability improvements.” This reframing defends the organisation’s image despite evidence of harm or dysfunction.

Thus, every act of self-sabotage becomes a signal for celebration, and of a denial of truth, as a result, rather than and attempted organisational acceptance of incongruent behaviour, or need for correction. The need to maintain an unthreatened collective self-image drives organisational members to rationalize and internalize damaging norms, making reversal difficult.

Groupthink (Irving Janis, 1972): Describes cohesive groups prioritizing consensus over critical evaluation. Symptoms include illusion of invulnerability, self-censorship, and mind-guarding (suppressing dissent).

Contrast with SAT: Groupthink emerges from external pressure for harmony; SAT from internal self-integrity threats. Groupthink suppresses threats collectively; SAT reframes them individually then scales that effect. Both enable incongruence, Groupthink frames SAT’s collective expression of individual biases into a more collectively agreed structure. All those “yes-men”, a leader may surround themselves, each have a threat defence to always agree, and comply, and people-please their boss. That was their selection criteria: Promote the one most likely to have a people-pleasing form of imposter syndrome.

Thus, it can be seen, that behind any groupthink decision, there is a collection of individual self-integrity based decisions, each based of a deep and secret psychological decision, aimed at some attempt to score “top marks”, with the boss.

Social Interdependence Theory (Morton Deutsch/Johnson & Johnson): Goal oriented structures create Positive interdependence (cooperation: mutual success) or Negative interdependence (competition: zero-sum).

Negative structures foster mutually oppositional, potentially destructive behaviours
Positive structures foster mutually promotive interactions.

Contrasting with SAT, interdependence can explain structural incentives for Conformity within an organisation; fostering an non-critical, biased approach towards compliance rather than critical questioning.

SAT also explains the use of psychological defences against integrity threats within those structures. Therefore, interdependence is setting the stage (e.g., negative goals reward defensive affirmation), while SAT explains why flawed practices may become acceptable and entrenched within that stage.

Integrating all three, groupthink can be seen to provide an understanding of the group dynamics involved, while Interdependence provides a structural context. SAT then provides a view of the individuals motivations towards their biases as they contribute to that collective expression.

Taken altogether, we can see, for example, that negative interdependence of the middle management areas will help cascade and enforce groupthink based decision making at the senior level, forcing the workers at all levels of the organisation to comply, as a SAT based threat defence. The threat, quite clearly, is losing their job/promotion/standing, in that organisation.

The Broader Implications

This understanding explains why organisations may persistently refuse to correct harmful policies, even amid clear evidence. The self-affirmation mechanism perpetuates a cycle where defensive rationalizations prevent growth and adaptation.

Recognising this dynamic offers a path toward meaningful change: interventions focused on validating core organisational values while candidly addressing painful truths. By broadening collective perspective beyond threatened domains, organisations can move from enforced incongruence toward authentic integrity.

Conclusion

Self-Affirmation Theory offers a potent framework to conceptualise organisational incongruence as a large-scale defence of institutional self-integrity. Contrasted with Groupthink (consensus pressure) and Social Interdependence (structural goals), SAT uniquely explains the motivational persistence of self-sabotage-as-virtue. Understanding this process reveals why destructive patterns are maintained and opens avenues for targeted strategies to foster genuine organisational health.

This theoretical insight is critical for leaders, change agents, and scholars aiming to disentangle the paradox of organisational self-damage veiled as success.