Controlled - Autonomous Motivation To Study The Effect Of Self-control Depletion

According to the strength model of self-control, self-control draws on limited energy. After an act of self-control consumes energy, self’s capacity to exercise further volitional action becomes exhausted temporarily, leading to failure in subsequent acts of self-control. Ego depletion is theorized to be a temporary reduction in the self’s capacity or willingness to engage in exercise of self-control caused by prior self-control. Recently, some experimental studies suggest that not all acts of self-control will deplete energy and hence damage subsequent acts of self-control, Autonomous self-control may not lead to ego-depletion. Using the dual-task experimental paradigm, and using RT and false rate on the Stroop color-word interference task as a measure of ego depletion, this research studied the role of the type of motivation on the degree of ego depletion.Two experiments were designed in this research which used vocational college students as subjects. Experiment One had adopted one-factor completely random design, taking the type of motivation as independent variable which included controlled motivation, neutral motivation and autonomous motivation. After had suppressed thoughts in different motivation orientation inducing by different situations, Participants finished stroop color-word tasks to examine the effect of motivation orientation on ego depletion while exerting self-control. The results showed that the reaction time and false rate of controlled motivation group were highest, and those of autonomous motivation group were lowest. On the basis of the experiment One, Experiment Two adopted2×2completely random design to examine whether differences in ego depletion in three groups were due to motivation or self-control strength, making the independent variable motivation type be two levels including controlled motivation and autonomous motivation, and adding task type as the independent variable including depletion task and non-depletion task. And mood was tested with the Brief Mood Introspection Scale to examine whether ego depletion in different conditions was affected by emotion. Results showed that (1) Performances of autonomous motivation group in depletion task condition were better than those of controlled motivation group; There was no significant difference in the reaction time and false rate between autonomous motivation group and controlled motivation group in non-depletion task condition; There was no significant difference in performances on the stroop task while exerting depletion task and non-depletion task in autonomous condition.(2) Participants’ mood also did not differ across task conditions, nor did it vary across motivation type, and the interaction was similarly not significant.The following four conclusions could be drawn through the above two experiments:(1) Autonomously motivated self-control may be less depleting and less easily lead to ego depletion than extrinsically motivated self-control.(2) Whether in autonomous conditions or controlled conditions, non-depletion task does not deplete energy, leading to ego depletion, which also suggests differences in self-control performance is not driven by motivation alone but the interaction with motivation and energy.(3) Autonomous motivation eliminate ego depletion.(4) Differences in the following self-control performances of different groups are not related to participants’ mood.