An Empirical Study Of Ego Depletion Affect On Trust Behavior

Trust is an important factor to maintain social relations,which plays a crucial role in promoting cooperation,developing good interpersonal relationships,improving work efficiency and creating a good social atmosphere.However,with the continuous progress of social economy,interpersonal trust has shown a decline trend.This research studies the influential factors of trust based on the theory of self-control resource model.Research one explores the relationship between self-control traits and interpersonal trust in the form of questionnaire.Research two consists of two behavioral experiments,they respectively take ego depletion tasks to explore the effects of ego depletion on the trust behavior with trust game as the research tool,and comes into following results:Research one shows that there is a significant positive correlation between self-control and interpersonal trust and self-control trait is an effective predictor of interpersonal trust.In research two,the experiment 1 takes e-crossing task to control the difference of ego depletion and a stranger as the trust object.The result shows that the investment amount of trusted in trust game under high ego depletion state is less than that of low ego depletion groups with the difference at a marginal significance level.The experiment 2 takes stroop task to control the difference of ego depletion and a stranger and an acquaintance respectively as the trust object.The result shows that:(1)the main effect of trust object is significant,whereas main effect of ego depletion condition is not significant and the interaction of the two is marginal significance;(2)When the trust object is stranger,the investment amount of trusted under high ego depletion state is less than that of low ego depletion groups.While the trust object is acquaintance,the investment amount between high and low ego depletion groups is not significant,indicating that the influence of ego depletion on trust behavior is influenced by the relationship between the two parties.Results of the two behavioralexperiments all exclude the influence of mood,gender,and characteristics of the subjects.