The Study Of Committed Ways On Promise-breaking Behavior In Ego-depletion

As a core quality of moral system, Integrity plays an important role in all aspects of social life. In recent years, integrity crisis has spread into the various walks of life, and gradually become the focus of psychological studies. From the perspective of self-control resource depletion, in addition to the lack of integrity culture, the failure of individual’s self-control leads to such lapses of integrity. If the individual’s mental resources consumed by the previous self-control task, the limited resources would be in short supply. In the ego-depletion condition, individual’s promise-breaking behaviors may be increased. It highlights the executive functions in the condition of resisting strong habitual responses and temptation(Mead, Baumeister, Gino, Schweitzer & Ariely, 2009). So how can we reduce the increasing promise-breaking behaviors in ego-depletion? This study discusses the function of committed ways on promise-breaking behaviors in ego depletion.This study has three main elements: Firstly, through interviews and questionnaires, we explored the effect of committed ways on the promise-breaking behaviors. Secondly, we explored the effect of elicited committed ways on the promise-breaking behaviors by the attention-control task and the reading-speed test. Finally, we explored the effect of voluntary committed ways on the promise-breaking behaviors by the habit-change task and the psychological knowledge test. Research conclusions are as follows:(1) The effects of different forms of commitment on promise-breaking behaviors are different. Under daily situations, individuals in oral commitmentare most likely to make promise-breaking problems. In choosing written commitment, individuals are least likely to do the promise-breaking things. The effect of vowed commitment is between them.(2) Ego depletion has adverse effects on integrity. In the high state of ego-depletion, individuals are more likely to make promise-breaking behaviors.(3) In the state of ego-depletion, when individuals are induced to make a promise, their promise-breaking behaviors can be effectively reduced by written commitment. But vowed commitment and oral commitment do not have the same effect.(4) In the state of ego-depletion, when individuals are initiative to make a promise, their promise-breaking behaviors can be effectively reduced by written commitment, vowed commitment and oral commitment. Compared with the high state of ego-depletion, promise-breaking behaviors can be reduced by vowed commitment obviously in the low state of ego-depletion. However, there is no significant difference between written commitment and oral commitment on the effect of reducing promise-breaking behaviors.