The Effect of Preceding Self-Control on Prosocial Behaviors: The Moderating Role of Awe

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Jin Li¹  Anke Li¹  Yu Sun¹  Hui’ e Li¹  Lei Liu³  Youlong Zhan¹  Wei Fan¹  Yiping Zhong¹ 

[1] Department of Psychology, Hunan Normal University;Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province;School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University

关键词: self-control;    prosocial behavior;    awe;    protective inhibition of self-regulation and motivation model;    moderating role;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00682

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

The exertion of self-control is known to result in subsequent detrimental effects on prosocial behaviors. Moreover, certain studies have demonstrated that positive emotions could drive people to allocate more attentional resources for conducting prosocial behaviors. However, whether and how awe – one important type of positive incidental emotion – moderates the effect of exerting self-control on subsequent prosocial behaviors remains unclear yet. The anonymous economic dictator game is an effective index of prosocial behaviors. We examined the influence of exerting self-control on prosocial behavior and the moderating role of awe on the effect of exerting self-control on prosocial behaviors in two experiments ( N = 280). We adopted the incongruent Stroop task to induce the exertion of self-control and participants were required to allocate money to others in the anonymous dictator game ( Experiment 1 ). We used the narrative recall task paradigm to elicit the emotion of awe during the interval between Stroop tasks and the dictator game ( Experiment 2 ). Results indicated that the exertion of self-control was detrimental to prosocial behaviors and awe weakened the detrimental effects of exerting self-control on prosocial behavior. We interpreted these results in terms of the protective inhibition of self-regulation and motivation (PRISM) model.

【 授权许可】

CC BY