The Features Of The Negativity Bias Evoked By Different Selves In The Self-discrepancy Theory

The negativity bias exists in many areas of the attention, emotion, and so on, for a long time, the’self has been a topic of discussion within psychology. In recent decades of years, amount of psychologist were interested in as soon as it was proposed.The study combined the self and negativity bias and explored different negativity bias in different temporal periods and the negativity bias mechanism through two experiments.The materials of first experiment is positive and negative personality word, and self-reference paradigm was required in the experiment, then, the responsibility of subjects is to determine whether these terms in line with the corresponding self in the different self-conditions and compare the negativity bias in different self conditions. The result show that the discrepancy of N200component is significant different in all self-condition and there exists negativity bias effect. Negative words elicited a more positive ERP deflection in the time window between650ms and800ms (LPC) relative to positive words and there is no difference of the amplitude between selves. In the first experiment, when evaluating the selves in earlier attention allocation stage and the late evaluation or reaction readiness stages, there all exists negativity bias effect, that is, negative words induced more volatility, the result does illustrate the negative information attracted more attention and cognitive resourcesThe second experiment use "clues-target" paradigm to manipulating attention resources and observed whether the attention resources can attune the ERPs. The result showed that the P300component is most positive in actual self condition, and negative word elicited a more negative N400related to positive words, then, The actual self elicited a more positive ERP deflection in the time window between650ms and800ms (LPC) relative to other selves.Based on the recent results, this study proved that the negativity bias in attention, emotional and late evaluated stages elicited by different selves is different and the mechanism of negativity is attuned by attention resources.