The Relationship Of Actual-Ideal Self-Discrepancies And Online Game Addiction:A Moderated Mediation Model

As a practical problem widely concerned by the society,online game addiction has seriously damaged the physical and mental health of college students.How to prevent online game addiction of college students is the top priority of improve their mental health level.This study based on Self-discrepancy Theory,Self-control Theory and Process Model of Emotion Regulation,to study actual-ideal self-discrepancies’ effects on online game addiction of college students,and discuss the mediating role of self-control and the moderating role of cognitive reappraisal between actual-ideal selfdiscrepancies and online game addiction.This paper is divided into two studies: In study 1,questionnaire was used to investigate the relationship between actual-ideal self-discrepancies and online game addiction,as well as the mediating effect of self-control and the moderating effect of cognitive reappraisal.A total of 901 college students from Sichuan,Henan and other places were selected to participate in this study by convenient sampling.Ten-Item Personality Inventory in China(TIPI-C),the online game subscale of the Internet Addiction Scale,the Self-control Scale(SCS)and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire(ERQ)were used to conduct the research.Experiment method was adopted in Study 2,which consisted of two experiments.The main purpose was to further verify the results of Study 1 and make up for the lack of clear causality in questionnaire study.Experiment1 was a single-factor between-subject design,designed to manipulate perceived selfdiscrepancy,clarify the causal relationship between actual-ideal self-discrepancy and online game addiction,and the mediating role of self-control between the two.Using convenient sampling,52 students from Sichuan Normal University were selected to participate in this experiment.Experiment 2 was Two-factor inter-subject design,to manipulate perceive self-discrepancy(large perceived self-discrepancy and small perceived self-discrepancy)and cognitive reappraisal(cognitive reappraisal and no cognitive reappraisal),then investigate the moderating effect of cognitive reappraisal on the first half path of actual-ideal self-discrepancy affecting online game addiction(actualideal self-discrepancy to self-control).By convenient sampling,103 students from Sichuan Normal University were selected to participate in the experiment,including 51 in the large perceived self-discrepancy group and 52 in the small perceived selfdiscrepancy group.The study 1 found that the actual-ideal self-discrepancy of college students significantly negatively predicted online game addiction,self-control played a significant mediating role,cognitive reappraisal could moderate the actual-ideal self-discrepancy to affect the first half of the path of online game addiction through self-control.Specifically,in individuals with high cognitive reappraisal,the negative predictive effect of actualideal self-discrepancy on self-control was weakened.In individuals with low cognitive reappraisal,the negative predictive effect of actual-ideal self-discrepancy on self-control was enhanced.In the study 2,the preliminary experiment found that the perceived selfdiscrepancy priming material was effective.Experiment 1 found that the actual-ideal disdiscrepancy of college students significantly negatively predicted online game addiction,and the separate mediating effect of self-control was significant.Experiment 2 found that self-control had a significant mediating effect between actual-ideal self-discrepancy and online game addiction,while the moderating effect of cognitive reappraisal on the mediating role of self-control was not significant.This study draws the following conclusions:(1)The greater the actual-ideal selfdiscrepancy,the lower the online game addiction.(2)actual-ideal self-discrepancy may enhance online game addiction by reducing self-control.(3)In the long run,cognitive reappraisal can alleviate online game addiction.