The Effect Of Ego Depletion On Moral Hypocrisy:The Moderating Role Of Moral Self-image

Moral hypocrisy,as one of the immoral behaviors against the true good advocated by the society,has become an important field of moral psychology research and attracted more and more scholars’ attention because of the universality of it’s existence and the complexity of its formation mechanism.Moral hypocrisy includes two levels: individual(inconsistency between words and deeds)and interpersonal(double standards),and the influence factors behind it are many,such as people’s state at this time.According to the theory of limited resources,ego depletion refers to the state of decreasing self-control resources,which will lead to the loss of individual psychological resources,and then lead to the decline of moral awareness and more unethical behaviors.Moral hypocrisy,as a kind of immoral behavior,will also be affected.Therefore,this study mainly discusses the effect of ego depletion on moral hypocrisy.Based on self-schema theory,individuals pay attention to and perceive the external world according to their own schemas,and then influence their behaviors and decisions.As a part of moral self-image,the improvement of moral self-image can make individual’s behavior more moral.Therefore,in order to mitigate the effect of ego depletion on moral hypocrisy,moral self-image is introduced as a moderating variable.There are two studies in this article.Study 1 includes experiment 1 and experiment 2.In experiment 1,college students were selected as subjects and the "stroop" task paradigm and positive/neutral task were used to investigate the effect of ego depletion on individual moral hypocrisy.The results show that ego depletion has an effect on personal moral hypocrisy,and high ego depletion leads to higher degree of hypocrisy.In experiment 2,college students were used as subjects to investigate the effect of ego depletion on interpersonal moral hypocrisy by using the "stroop" task paradigm and moral dilemma.The results show that ego depletion has an effect on interpersonal moral hypocrisy,and the scores of high depletion group are significantly different,and the scores of self are higher.In study 2,college students were selected as subjects,and “ecrossing” task paradigm and moral hypocrisy task assignment paradigm were adopted to investigate the role of moral self-image in the influence of ego depletion on moral hypocrisy.In the low moral self-image group,ego depletion has an effect on the level of personal moral hypocrisy,and the high ego depletion group is more inclined to choose hypocritical behavior.In the high moral self-image group,there was no significant difference in hypocritical behavior choice of subjects in the high moral self-image group.In interpersonal moral hypocrisy,ego depletion and moral self-image has significant interaction effect,the analysis of the simple effect shows that in the low moral self image group,ego depletion has significant effects on interpersonal moral hypocrisy,subjects of high ego depletion group for themselves and others poor score significantly higher than that of low ego depletion group,but in the high moral self image group,ego depletion has no significant effect on moral hypocrisy.Based on the above two studies,the following conclusions can be drawn: self-depletion has an effect on personal moral hypocrisy and interpersonal moral hypocrisy,and the degree of moral hypocrisy under high depletion condition is significantly higher than that under low ego depletion condition.Moral selfimage plays a moderating role in self-depletion and moral hypocrisy.Compared with individuals in the high priming group,individuals in the low priming group have higher levels of personal and interpersonal moral hypocrisy.High moral self-image can mitigate the effects of ego depletion on moral hypocrisy.