The Influence Of Positive Emotion On Ego Depletion

Self-control occurs when people attempts to alter the way which people would otherwise think or behave. It is a limited resource. Exerting self-control may consume resource, reducing the amount of resource available for other self-control efforts. Self-control is not negligible caused a negative impact on the performance of athletes. Therefore, finding ways to deal with self-control to reduce the negative impact is especially important for athletes. Based on the purpose of this study is testing the hypothesis that emotion could overcome ego-depletion. This study should be able to provide a way to address the negative effects of self-control.(1)60athlete undergraduates completed the experiment. Some participants saw the video, and control their attention. Then they were induced different emotion. It was found that there was no significantly difference between ego-depletion group and control croup on Stroop task in the positive emotion. It implied that positive emotion could counteract ego-depletion while the negative emotion could not.(2)24tennis athletes completed the experiment. Some participants saw the video, and control their attention. Then they were induced positive emotion by self-encouragement or others-encouragement (coach). It was found that the negative effect of ego-depletion on Stroop task could be counteracted by positive emotion induced by self-encouragement and others-encouragement (coach). And the others-encouragement of athletes was better than the self-encouragement group on match reaction time in the ego-depletion condition.This study supported the theory of ego-depletion again and the phenomenon can be spread in athletes. It justified that positive emotion could overcome ego-depletion. The self-encouragement was better than others-encouragement (coach) on the Stroop task. And the negative emotion could exacerbate the ego-depletion.