Effect Of Economic Insecurity On The Self-serving Bias

Currently,as the trend of economic globalization and integration is becoming increasingly clear,there are not only prospects for vigorous development but also potential economic fluctuations.For individuals,stable job and regular income that could meet the daily demands are necessary to obtain a sense of security;otherwise,it may induce economic insecurity.Economic insecurity refers to the sense of uncertainty and unpredictability related to individuals'economic conditions Unemployment and low income will make individuals experience economic insecurity.In addition,job instability,poor economic situation,and public emergencies may also induce individuals to worry about their future economic conditions and thus produce economic insecurity.Previous studies have found that economic insecurity may inflict physical pain.Individuals or families with higher level of economic insecurity will relieve physical pain by consuming more analgesics Economic insecurity can also cause anxiety,depression,life insecurity and other psychological problems which might require the individual to do self-regulation.For example,previous studies have found that the economic insecurity,no matter it comes from unemployment,low income or concerns about future economic conditions,might threaten one's self-esteem and damage one's mental health and self-image These negative effects might trigger off individuals'defensive self-protective responses.Researches on self-processing have found that people make defensive responses against threats,manifesting the self-serving bias in attribution.That is,people tend to attribute positive events to themselves and negative events to others,which is conductive to protect individuals' positive self-image.When higher level of economic insecurity is perceived,will people adopt the self-serving bias strategy to protect themselves?This dissertation aims to explore the impact of economic insecurity on the self-serving bias.The study might enable us to form a more comprehensive understanding of the negative impact of economic insecurity,that is,economic insecurity may bring a broad influence on evaluations and attributions of interpersonal eventsIn order to explore the issues mentioned above,three studies were carried out,including seven experiments in total.Study 1,consisting of two experiments,introduced an interpersonal event attribution task to examine the self-serving bias and the characteristics of associated brain activity.Based on previous studies,the experiment 1 tested whether the interpersonal event attribution task can measure the self-serving bias or not.Specifically,participants were presented with self-relevant or self-irrelevant interpersonal events,with each type of event being equally allocated positive and negative events.And then they were asked to give attribution ratings to self or other in the positive or negative interpersonal events.Results showed that there was no significant difference in attribution ratings between self and other in positive events,but participants attributed negative events less to self than to other,manifesting the self-serving bias.In the experiment 2,the event-related potential technology with the advantages of high time resolution was used to investigate the characteristics of brain activity associated to the self-serving bias in the interpersonal event attribution task.Results showed that,compared to others,greater P300 amplitude was witnessed when participants processed self-related information.And the difference of P300 amplitude between self and other was greater in negative events than that in positive eventsOn the basis of the study 1,the study 2 included three experiments to examine the difference of the self-serving bias between individuals with different levels of economic insecurity.The experiment 3 recruited participants who were in the last year of college study,and set the number of employment opportunities each participant had obtained as the indicator to measure their level of economic insecurity,thereby investigating the self-serving bias of individuals with different levels of economic insecurity through the interpersonal event attribution task.Results showed that,compared with individuals with lower level of economic insecurity who had obtained more employment opportunities,individuals with higher level of economic insecurity who had obtained fewer employment opportunities showed greater self-serving bias when evaluating negative events.In the experiment 4,besides the number of employment opportunities obtained by participants,the degree of satisfaction of the obtained employment opportunities was also used as an indicator to measure one's level of economic insecurity.Results confirmed that compared with individuals with fewer employment opportunities,individuals with more employment opportunities had greater self-serving bias when evaluating negative events.However,the degree of satisfaction of the obtained job opportunities did not affect the self-serving bias.Due to the fact that economic insecurity can be not only measured by the objective employment opportunities,but also related to individuals'subjective concerns over their own economic status in real life,the experiment 5 was conducted which utilized the scale of economic insecurity to evaluate one's sense of economic insecurity and explore the differences of the self-serving bias between individuals with different levels of economic insecurity.Similar results showed that individuals with higher economic insecurity performed greater self-serving bias than those with lower one when evaluating negative eventsIn the study 3,in order to improve the internal validity of the study,we manipulated the level of each participant's economic insecurity under laboratory scenario to explore its effect on the self-serving bias.According to the manipulation of economic insecurity in the study of Chou et al.(2016),experiment 6 surveyed the influence by making one group of participants reading the textual materials about poor employment situation to initiate the sense of economic insecurity.The results showed that,comparing with the control group,participants whose economic insecurity were primed by poor employment materials before the experiment exhibited greater self-serving bias when evaluating negative events.The experiment 7 further took advantage of the event-related potential technology to explore the characteristic of brain activity when the primed economic insecurity affecting the self-serving bias.Results showed that,at the behavioral level,participants whose economic insecurity were primed showed greater self-serving bias compared to the control group.At the neural level,compared to others,information related to self induced a greater P300 amplitude;and the difference of P300 amplitude between self and other was modulated by the primed economic insecurityIn summary,this dissertation examined the impact of economic insecurity on the self-serving bias and the characteristics of brain activity.Individuals with higher level of economic insecurity presented greater self-serving bias.This means that the self-serving bias might be an important self-protection strategy for individuals to cope with economic insecurity.The magnitude of P300 amplitude could reflect the impact of economic insecurity on the self-serving bias.