The Effect Of Consistent Contributors And Their Dissemination Mechanisms:The Role Of Identification And Self-Transcendence

Cooperation has permanent importance to human evolution and survival.When people cooperate,they can get more benefits than working alone,but the pursuit of personal interests often drives some people to play the role of "free rider",which always eventually lead to the collapse of cooperation.Researchers often use the public goods game paradigm to simulate such conflicts between personal interests and collective interests in reality.Numerous studies have attempted to explore and find that in the public goods dilemma games,cooperation decreases or disappears across time,regardless of the variance of the paradigms.Researchers then proposed the structural solutions which change the economic incentives of the dilemmas and the social environment,and the motivational solutions which change individuals'perception of the social environment in a more intangible way,to maintain cooperation.Weber(2004)proposed the effect of consistent contributors(CCs)as a kind of motivational solutions,and argued that an individual who consistently contributes to the public goods can effectively change the team members'perception of the group norm and significantly increase their cooperative behaviors.The CCs were then proved by researchers from different fields to have a positive impact on the stability of cooperation inside teams.However,most of the studies focused on exploring the direct impact of CCs on the cooperative behavior of team members.In fact,after being influenced by CCs,team members often show a certain degree of prosocial behaviors in other situations without the CCs,and therefore further influence the other group members in the new situations,which can be called the dissemination effect of CCs.The influence of the CCs effect persists for multiple periods and therefore promote prosocial behaviors in a multiplicative way.As a result,exploring the underlying mechanism of the dissemination effect of CCs is of great theoretical and practical importance.Based on the social identity theory and studies of self-motives,the current study puts forward the main hypothesis that the self-sacrificed CCs inspire the group members to have personal identification with them,and thus experience "self-transcendence",which further drive them to increase their cooperative behaviors.In the meantime,the experience of self-transcendence also leads to the sense of calling,which transforms into prosocial behaviors when the group members enter in new situations without CCs.This is regarded as the mechanism of the dissemination effect of CCs.To test these main hypotheses,the whole thesis designed three studies with six experiments,which discussed the self-transcendence mechanism of the CCs effect,the impact of self-sacrifice of CCs and individuals'personal identification with the CCs on individuals' self-transcendence and their cooperative behaviors,as well as the self-transcendence-based dissemination effect of CCs,respectively.In addition,based on the"trait-situation"theory,the current dissertation also considered the role of personality traits in the underlying mechanism of both the direct effect and dissemination effect of CCs.The main conclusions of the current study are as follows:(1)Experience of self-transcendence as the core mechanism of the CCs effect:CCs enable group members to experience self-transcendence,and that further leads them to show increased cooperative behaviors.Team members'experience of self-transcendence includes two dimensions,one is the reduction of greed motives,and the other is the feeling of the moral elevation,which is a kind of self-transcendence emotions.The two dimensions each mediate the influence of CCs on individuals'cooperative behaviors.(2)The basis and premise of self-transcendence:Team members'personal identification with CCs is the basis for the self-transcendence emotion when individuals witness consistent contributing behaviors.The personal identification with CCs is influenced by the individual's perception of the self-sacrifice of CCs.The more self-sacrificing the CCs are,the stronger the team members identify with them,and the more they are willing to show cooperative behaviors in the team.(3)The dissemination effect of CCs based on self-transcendence:The CCs-influenced team members still exhibit higgh prosocial behavior in other contexts without CCs.The prosocial behaviors are not limited to cooperative behavior in the public goods dilemma,but also includes generous behavior in the dictator games and third-party compensate behaviors,and therefore,extensive.The dissemination effect is based on the individual's self-transcendence emotion,that is,their moral elevation generated due to witnessing the consistent contributing behaviors,and leads to a sense of calling.When individuals enter new situations without CCs,their sense of calling transform into prosocial behavior.(4)The moderating role of individual personality traits:Individuals' social value orientation regulates the impact of the existence of CCs and their self-sacrifice on individuals' cooperative behavior.Specifically,CCs have unique emotional influence on pro-selfs,that CCs positively influence pro-selfs' cooperative behaviors through enhancing their moral elevation.The more self-sacrifice the CCs are,the more cooperative the pro-selfs are;On the contrary,pro-socials are directly affected by CCs and show increased cooperative behaviors,and they are not sensitive to the degree of self-sacrifice of the CCs.Individual's moral identity also positively moderates the process that their sense of calling transforms into the cooperative behaviors in the context without CCs:individuals with high levels of moral identity will transform their callings into cooperative behaviors,while the cooperative behaviors of individuals with low levels of moral identity will not be affected by their callings.