The Effect Of Pre-commitment On Prosocial Behavior

The cultivation of prosocial behavior not only contributes to the improvement of personality and the development of moral character,but also plays an important role in promoting the harmonious and stable development of society.Pre-commitment is an effective self-control strategy.By making a long-term decision in advance to limit the choice of immediate temptation,pre-commitment can avoid the failure of self-control,and then promote the development of long-term goals.The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between pre-commitment and prosocial behavior by two studies,and to reveal its intrinsic electrophysiological mechanism by using eventrelated potential(ERPs)technique.In experiment 1,one-factor inter-group design(precommitment group vs direct selection group),dictator game paradigm was used to examine the prosocial level of individuals,and the average allocation was used as the level of prosocial behavior.In experiment 2,the assignment task was adapted on the basis of experiment 1.Experiment 2(commitment group: pre-commitment group,control group)× 2(total allocation amount: 10 yuan,100 yuan)was designed,and Fz,FCz,Cz,CPz,Pz were used as analytical electrodes.The dependent variables were the total average allocation and EEG data.Behavioral data showed:(1)after controlling additional variables such as trait self-control,prosocial tendency,empathy level,mood state,etc.Participants in the pre-committed starting group preferred to allocate more amounts to others in a dictator’s game task(2)in assignment tasks,whether in highreward or low-reward allocations,the pre-commitment group had significantly higher allocations than the control group.The ERP results show that:(1)in the P300 amplitude,the main effect of the group was significant.Compared with the control group,the precommitment starting group induced larger P300 amplitude when making prosocial choice.The interaction between allocation amount and electric pole is significant.The P300 amplitude induced by 10 yuan allocation was significantly larger than that of 100 yuan allocation.(2)on the amplitude of N200,the main effect of the group was not significant.Pre-commitment starting group induced a smaller amplitude of N200 when making prosocial choice than the control group.The following conclusions are drawn:(1)the initiation of pre-commitment contributes to the improvement of individual’s prosocial behavior.(2)on the one hand,pre-commitment play a role through resisting immediate temptation by exerting self-control function,and choosing prosocial behavior with long-term benefit after weighing and evaluating the value of short-term benefit and long-term benefit;On the other hand,the initiation of pre-commitment stimulates individuals’ sense of identity to ideal morality and their inner consciousness of social norms,thus promoting the emergence of prosocial behavior.(3)the activation of pre-commitment induced larger P300 and smaller N200 amplitudes,which provided ERP evidence for the promotion of prosocial behavior by pre-commitment.