The Effect Of Private Self-awareness And Selfcontrol Resources:Evidence From Behavior And Eyetracking

Diagnostic self-deception motivated by self-service is the inner psychological mechanism of many bad behaviors,such as drug or alcohol addiction.These bad behaviors can cause serious losses to individuals.Therefore,reducing self-deception is of great significance.This research explores the influence of self-awareness and self-control resources on self-deception,in order to find ways to reduce the level of self-deception.In this study,three behavioral experiments and one eye movement experiment were designed to explore the effects of self-awareness and self-control resource on self-deception.Experiment 1 verifies and improves the point tracking task paradigm to explore whether it can effectively induce the motivation and behavior of self-deception in the context of Chinese culture.The results showed that compared with the non-background information group,there was a significant difference in the average reaction time between the two stages of the point tracking task and IQ-related fast background information group,that is,the fast background information group produced self-deception.Experiment 2explored the effect of self-awareness on self-deception,and found that the average response time difference between the two stages in the private self-perception group was smaller than that in the public self-awareness group and the non-priming group,that is,the private self-perception group had a lower level of self-deception.On the other hand,public awareness does not affect the level of self-deception.In experiment 3a,the point tracking task paradigm was used to explore the influence of private self awareness and self-control resource on self-deception.The results showed that the self-control resource depletion group had a higher level of self-deception than the non-depletion group,and there was no significant difference in the level of self-deception between the selfcontrol resource depletion group and the non-depletion group.Experiment 3b uses eye movement tracker to explore whether private awareness and self-control resource also have influence on self-deception induced by motivation to diagnose their future health through visual search paradigm.Experiment 3b repeats the results of experiment 3a from the data of behavior and eye movement,under the condition of selfcontrol resource depletion.The number of hidden objects found in the personal awareness priming group and the average fixation time and times in the region of interest of the subjects in the priming group were significantly different from those in the non-priming group.According to the comprehensive results,it can be concluded that:(1)the point tracking task paradigm can also induce diagnostic self-deception in the context of Chinese culture,which is consistent with the definition of self-deception in the mixed belief model.(2)different aspects of selfawareness have different effects on self-deception.Compared with the individuals in the priming state and the non-priming state,the individuals in the priming state of private awareness have a lower level of selfdeception.(3)individuals with self-control resource depletion have a higher level of self-deception than those without self-control resource depletion.(4)from the two aspects of behavior and eye movement,it is proved that the initiation of private awareness can restrain self-deception enhanced by the depletion of self-control resource.