How Did Ego Depletion Induce Adolescent Risk-Taking Behavior?: Evidence From Behavioral And ERP Studies

Adolescents have more risk-taking behaviors than children or adults,at the same time,they are also fall into ego-depletion(long term self-control leads to a decline in subsequent self-control)easily.The strength model of ego-depletion suggests that the decline in self-control is caused by a lack of psychological energy.The psychological energy is very limited,and the long-term self-control almost exhausted it,leading ego-depletion.However,in recent years,the strength model has been criticized by many researchers,and the relationship between ego-depletion and psychological energy was not clear.In order to solve the problem of strength model,the researchers proposed the process model of ego-depletion,this model assumes that the individual motivation regulation follows the balance of "labor-reward" principle,the individual will be bored with the work after frequent self-control,and wants to get the reward as compensation.According to the process model,the mechanism of ego-depletion induced adolescent risk-taking behaviors is not because of insufficiency of psychological energy,but because the decline of self-control motivation and the increase of reward seeking motivation.Taking into account the direct supporting evidences of the process model are inadequate,and how to explain that ego-depletion induced adolescent risk behavior based on process model is just a research idea.So,on the basis of the test process model,this study will further investigate how ego-depletion increase adolescent risk-taking behaviors.This research used the method of behavioral experiment combined with ERP Technology.Experiment 1 was used to test the process model of ego-depletion,and the ego-depletion state was induced by Stroop task with different difficulty.The participants were then completed the self-control ability task and reward seeking task.Experiment 2 investigated the behavioral and neural mechanism of the ego-depletion induced adolescent risk-taking behavior based on the process model.In addition to the experiment 1 task,the participants also needed to complete the simulated risk-taking task.The results are as follows:(1)ego-depletion leaded to the decline of self-control and the increase of reward seeking.(2)Only under the ego-depletion state,self-control ability could predict reward seeking,and self-control ability has no significant correlation with reward seeking in no ego-depletion state.(3)ego-depletion induced the risk behaviors of adolescent,and the specific mechanism were the decline of self-control ability and the increase of reward seeking.(4)Compared with no ego-depletion,ego-depletion leaded to adolescent's N2 component average amplitude increase in self-control ability task,LPP component average amplitude increase in reward seeking task,N2 and LPP amplitudes were increased in simulated risk-taking task.The results show that ego-depletion can indirect increase risk-taking behavior by weakening self-control ability and enhancing reward seeking.The results suggest that ego-depletion is an important factor to increase adolescent risk-taking behavior.On the one hand,it could weaken self-control ability;on the other hand,it could enhance reward seeking,and further lead to more risk-taking behavior.Future research should pay more attention to the problem of ego-depletion.