Comparative Study Of Implicit Self-Expansion And Explicit Self-Expansion

Self-expansion Model provided that expansion is one of basic human motives, people bring others into their self-concept to access new abilities, viewpoints and resources to improve self-efficacy. There’s two ways that bring others into our own, one is conscious and can be aware by individuals called explicit self-expansion, and the other one is unconscious and cannot be aware by individuals called implicit self-expansion. Some scholars put their study in explicit self-expansion and implicit self-expansion respectively, but there are very few studies on the relationship between their two. Research on the mechanism of explicit and implicit self-expansion helps people inspire individual behavior, from the source to improve one’s ability to solve problems. Therefore, our research based on the assumption that implicit self-expansion is existing anywhere anytime, and relatively independent from explicit self-expansion that comes out two experiments. Experiment1using the variant of Implicit Association Test-GO/NO-GO (GNAT), the purpose is to confirm the existence of implicit self-expansion motivation, and reveal its relationship with the implicit self-esteem. Priming type is single factor subject, independent variable is compatible or incompatible task, measuring the response sensitivity to determine whether one can tell the target and noise correctly, and prove the existence of Implicit self-expansion motivation ultimately. Experiment2used traditional personal expansion self-report questionnaire to measure explicit self-expansion, and reveals the relations between explicit and Implicit self-expansion. The result proved that the implicit self-expansion and explicit self-expansion are independent of each other. The result illustrates implicit self-expansion cannot be improved by explicit self-expansion, it can only improve through a variety of cues.