Abstract:

Social exclusion is generally defined as the need of people’s belongingness and social relationships, which is thwarted owing to being excluded by a group or other people. Relevant researches suggest that social exclusion may affect the cognition, emotion and behavior. The proposition of ego depletion is based on the strength model of self-control, it is the phenomenon when self-control failed, which people unwilling to control themselves. According to the self-control failure theory of the social exclusion and the strength model of self-control, social exclusion may affect the ego depletion. Ego depletion could cause aggressive behavior, bad emotion and so on. During recent years, researchers had found that there were several methods to compensate the influence of the ego depletion. Self-awareness refers to the inner subjective state of individual when he is aware of himself. Previous research has consistently demonstrated a unidirectional link between self-awareness and self-control, that self-awareness increases self-control performance. Based on these, we expect that self-awareness can compensate the influence of ego depletion, which also can compensate the ego depletion caused by social exclusion. With Chinese college students as participants, there are two experiments in this study. In Experiment 1, the aim was to explore the compensation of self-awareness on the ego depletion. This experiment used cross “e” paradigm to initiate ego depletion, and also use the word-search test to prime self-awareness, which was a common kind paradigm of self-awareness’s priming. The experiment also used the Stroop task as the method of the ego depletion measurement. 60 college students were randomly assigned to any one of the four experimental groups, there are 15 subjects in each group. It was a 2(ego depletion: initiate vs. non initiate) ×2(self-awareness: prime vs. non prime) between-group design. All the subjects would finish the ego depletion initiation task (cross ‘e’ task) first, then the subjects completed the Brief Mood Introspection Scale to test their mood state, and then they operated the test of self-awareness’s priming, at last, they completed the Stroop task. The results showed that, the main effect of ego depletion initiation and self-awareness was significant and the interaction of the ego depletion and self-awareness was also significant. Based on Experiment 1, Experiment 2 further explored the role of self-awareness in the relationship between social exclusion and ego depletion. This experiment used the recall writing paradigm and the real condition rejection method to initiate the social exclusion. It was a 2(exclusion situation: the recall vs. the real)×3(exclusion type: the rejected vs. the accepted vs. the controlled)×2(self-awareness: prime vs. non prime) between-group design, there are 180 college students in the experiment, they were randomly assigned to any one of the experimental groups. The number of the subjects was 15 in each group. In the recall condition, the subjects must write the experience of being excluded, or accepted, or the activity of yesterday. While in the real condition, the subjects were informed that they were joining in an activity to set up the real situation. After that, all the subjects evaluated the sense of exclusion by themselves, and then finished the BMIS. Then the subjects operated the task of self-awareness’s priming, at last, all the subjects finished the Stroop task. The results showed that, the main effect of social exclusion and self-awareness was significant, and the interaction of social and self-awareness was also significant, the results also showed that, the main effect of exclusion situation was significant. In this research, we conclude that self-awareness can compensate the effects of the ego depletion, which also can compensate the effects of the social exclusion on ego depletion.