Research On Self-serving Bias Of People With Internet Gaming Disorder

With the rapid development of network technology,the Internet has become a ubiquitous part of human life.Although the Internet brings great convenience to our daily life and work,it also brings many negative effects.In particularly,Internet gaming disorder(IGD)has attracted worldwide attention since its serious impacts on the individuals' physical and mental health.IGD is referred to the excessive or persistent use of online games,which leads to severe consequences such as poor academic/work performances,disrupted interpersonal relationships and social deficits.Recently,numerous empirical studies have focused on the complex cognitive processes in IGD,and converged to the same findings that the individuals with IGD exhibit impaired decision-making ability,weakened executive control ability and diminished emotion regulation ability.It is worth noting that these cognitive processes cannot be completely separated from the self,which is the necessary and core prerequisite for people to form their own views,characteristics and behaviors.Usually,in order to maintain positive self-cognition and protect self-esteem,individuals tend to attribute positive outcomes(such as success)to internal yet attribute negative outcomes(such as failure)to external,which is known as self-serving bias.This type of cognitive bias is prevalent in everyday life and could help people maintain and improve a positive self-concept and deflect negative events and negative feedback.However,it is not clear how the self-serving bias is manifest in individuals with IGD.Studies have shown that the individuals with IGD have lower self-esteem and higher depression,and also had a more negative evaluation of both their real and ideal self,which implied an abnormal self-serving bias in IGD.In present study,we investigated the self-serving bias in individuals with IGD and its neural correlates by using behavioral,EEG and MRI experiments,and utilized self-affirmation manipulation to moderate the self-serving bias of individuals with IGD.Considering that the individuals with IGD spent much more time in the virtual game contexts,in addition to explore the self-serving bias in the real world,we also explored the self-serving bias of IGD in the game world.The present research explored the problems described above through four studies with a total of seven experiments.The control group selected in present research was recreational Internet gaming user(RGU)who had gaming experience and spent some time on gaming,but did not meet the criteria for IGD and were more suitable as a control group.Firstly,Study 1 constructed interpersonal events that could occur in both real-world and game-world contexts to examine the self-serving bias of individuals in normal population and verify the validity of the experimental material(Experiment 1).Secondly,Study 2 set up the real-world and game-world contexts to explore the behavioral characteristics and electrophysiological time course of self-serving bias in individuals with IGD thorough behavioral(Experiment 2a)and EEG(Experiment 2b)experiments.Thirdly,Study 3conducted the multimodal research,which combined a task-based f MRI study(Experiment 3a)and a structural MRI and resting-state f MRI study(Experiment 3b),to investigate self-serving bias and its neural correlates in real-world and game-world contexts.Finally,Study 4 merged the behavioral data of participants with IGD in Studies 2 and 3,and probed the correlations among self-esteem,depression and selfserving bias through path analysis(Experiment 4a).On the basis of this,selfaffirmation manipulation was used to moderate self-serving bias of participants with IGD(Experiment 4b).The results of Study 1 showed that individuals in normal population manifested self-serving bias and showed self-protection rather than self-enhancement.Meanwhile,the results of Study 1 verified the validity of experimental materials.The behavioral results of Studies 2a and 2b consistently presented that compared to RGU,participants with IGD exhibited an attenuated self-serving bias in both real-world and game-world contexts.Specifically,both self-protection and self-enhancement of participants with IGD were diminished.Meanwhile,the EEG results of Study 2b showed that P200 amplitude from the Pz electrode in participants with IGD was smaller than RGU while attributing the causes of positive events in both real-world and game-world contexts.In Study 3,the behavioral results were consistent with those of Study 2.The task-based f MRI results of Study 3a showed that the increase in the left precuneus activation was significantly lower in participants with IGD than RGU with the rise in self-attribution ratings of positive interpersonal events.In addition,the task-based f MRI results of Study 3a also showed that the ventral medial prefrontal cortex(vm PFC)activation in participants with IGD was enhanced as compared with RGU while attributing the causes of negative events in both real-world and game-world contexts and that the vm PFC activation was negatively correlated with the self-protection in IGD group.The structural MRI results of 3b showed that participants with IGD had increased cortical gyrification of left precuneus as compared with RGU.The resting-state functional connectivity results in Study 3 showed that as compared with RGU,there was lower static functional connectivity between the left precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex(PCC)in participants with IGD.Moreover,the static functional connectivity was positively correlated with self-protection in IGD group.In conclusion,the multimodal research of Study 3 showed that there were structural abnormalities in participants with IGD as compared with RGU,and the resting-state and task-based f MRI results jointly indicated that attenuated self-serving bias in participants with IGD may be related to abnormal neural activity in precuneus.The task-based f MRI results also showed that the increased vm PFC activation in participants with IGD was associated with the attenuation of self-serving bias while attributing the causes of negative events.Study4 a conducted a path analysis based on all behavioral data from participants with IGD and found that the attenuated self-serving bias in participants with IGD was related to their lower level of self-esteem.Moreover,the results of Study 4a also showed that selfenhancement in participants with IGD was predicted by their self-esteem and selfprotection was jointly predicted by their self-esteem and depression.On the basis of this,self-affirmation manipulation was used to moderate self-esteem in Study 4b,and the results indicated that self-affirmation effectively enhanced self-esteem and selfprotection in participants with IGD,and further affected the attenuated self-serving bias in participants with IGD as compared with RGU.In summary,the present research systematically examines the self-serving bias in individuals with IGD through behavioral,EEG and MRI experiments.In addition,the self-serving bias in individuals with IGD is moderated through employing selfaffirmation manipulation.The results of present study reveal that the individuals with IGD show an attenuated self-serving bias,which may be related to the changes of neural activity in some cortical midline brain regions(e.g.,precuneus,vm PFC and PCC).In addition,the present research finds that the self-serving bias in individuals with IGD could be predicted by self-esteem,and self-affirmation could increase the self-serving bias of IGD,providing a new perspective to maintain self-esteem and enhance positive self-perception of individuals with IGD.