The Effect Of Self Attrition On Altruistic Behavior

People often face conflicts between altruistic prosocial motivations and selfish impulses when making social decisions.Depleted individuals become self-centered and activating money also makes people self-centered.This study designed three experiments exploring whether depleted individuals become altruistic while activating the concept of money and the buffering effect of money for the loss.Experiment 1 recruited 100 participants and carried out a single-factor subject design by setting traditional dictator game and its variation to examine the altruistic behaviors between different individuals.The result showed that only allocating money in the dictator game,the number of tokens distributed by depleted participants was significantly lower than non-depleted ones.Experiment 2 investigated whether the differences between ego depletion and altruistic behaviors,and if so,explore the money compensates for the loss,a 2(depletion:depletion/non-depletion)x2(priming:money/control)x2(mutual opportunity:yes/no)mixed design is carried out.We also recruited 99 students as participants.As a result,it was found that:(1)the number of tokens which allocate by depleted participants was significantly less than non-depleted ones.(2)Depleted participants who remind of money concepts allocated more than non-depleted ones who remind of neutral concepts.(3)For non-depleted participants,reminding the concept of money,leaded to decreased altruistic behavior,but there was no difference in participants who remind the neutral concept.Experiment 3 recruited 94 participants and carried out a 2(priming:money/control)x2(money function:symbolic function/instrumental function)between-subjects design in order to examine whether different money function was the underlying factor to compensate money for depletion.It was found that people who hold symbolic money function under money priming condition allocated more tokens than those who hold instrumental money function and under control condition.This study got some conclusions below:(1)Ego depletion reduce altruistic behavior.(2)The essence of dictator game is to measure the pure altruistic behavior which excludes reciprocal factors.(3)When holding an instrumental function of money,people who priming money does not compensate for the loss.(4)When holding a symbolic function of money,people who priming money does compensate for the loss.