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This research examines how people can defend themselves from the threat associated with the COVID‐19 pandemic by relying more on their recently generated thoughts (unrelated to the threat), thus leading those thoughts to have a greater impact on judgement through a meta‐cognitive process of thought validation. Study 1 revealed that the impact of the favourability of self‐related thoughts on self‐esteem was greater for those feeling relatively more (vs. less) threatened by COVID‐19. Study 2 manipulated (rather than measured) the favourability of thoughts and assessed the perceived COVID‐19 threat. Results also showed that the impact of thoughts on subsequent self‐evaluations was greater for those feeling more threatened by COVID‐19. Study 3 conceptually replicated the results using a full experimental design by manipulating both thought favourability andthe perceived COVID‐19 threat, moving from …