Self-affirmation and responses to health messages: A meta-analysis on intentions and behavior.

Self-affirmation influences health messages' effect on intentions and behavior; however, with the present study finding that intention effect sizes did not predict behavior effect sizes, and with past studies of heath behavior change finding that intentions do not always translate to behavior, little research supports a causal intention-behavior relation among self-affirmation studies. Future research is needed to address which specific health-related responses explain why self-affirmation elicits health behavior change.