The Study Of Ego Depletion On Individuals’ Altruistic Behavior

Self regulation is one of the most important core functions for human beings. In modern society, we need to control ourselves almost everyday to keep inner balance, but the process of controlling is extremely energy-consuming. According to the self-regulation strength model by Baumeister, the resource for self-regulate is limited. When self-regulate resource is over consumed, ego- depletion will be initiated, resulting in poor performance on subsequent task. The present study aimed to examine the impact of ego-depletion on individuals’altruistic behavior and investigated whether the negative effect of ego depletion could be overcome by priming moral words subliminally.The present study consisted of two experiments, and college students were chosen as our participants. The results were consistent with the hypotheses, which confirmed our predictions.Study 1 found that ego depletion had a negative influence on individuals’altruistic behavior. Participants who had exerted self-regulation and were depleted gave the receiver less money than those in the non-depletion condition in the dictator game. But this effect might be moderated by neuroticism. At high levels of neuroticism, the average giving of depleted dictators was significantly lower that that of non-depleted ones, but depletion made no difference at low levels of neuroticism, which indicated that the neurotics were more easier to be affected by ego depletion.The results of study 2 showed that the negative effect of ego depletion could be counteracted by priming moral words subliminally for neurotics. To be specific, compared with the participants in the controlled condition, people in the priming condition strengthened their altruistic behavior and allocated more money to the strangers.