The Study Of The Effect Of Self-affirmation And Evaluation Standard On Pro-social Behavior: The Moderating Role Of Moral Identity

People generally think that they are moral,and when this view is threatened,people may take measures to counter the threat to maintain a good evaluation of their own.Although the self-affirmative theory and self-consistency theory emphasize the maintenance of self-concept,self-consistency theory focuses on the relationship between behavior and expectation,and self-affirmative theory emphasizes the integrity of self,so there are differences in the maintenance of self-concept.In the self-consistency view,the repair must be directed at the specific inconsistency that caused the problem.For self-affirmation,the repair can be general.In other words,anything that reaffirms the integrity of the self-system will do.Therefore,the two in the pro-social behavior is very different.So,when will people show self-consistency,when will there be self-affirmation? To explore this issue,this study designed 2 experiments,from the perspective of moral identity,self-affirmation and evaluation standard to study the differences of self-affirmation and self-consistency in pro-social behavior.Experiment 1 selected 251 subjects,using 2(moral identity)× 3(self-affirmation areas)between the experimental design.At the beginning of the experiment,the moral self of the participants was threatened by the way of behavior priming.Then,the participants were tested with different contents of self-affirmation(related to morality or not),and finally measured the pro-social behavior of the participants.Through this experiment to investigate the individual moral identity and self-affirmation content difference effects on pro-social behavior.Experiment 2 selected 172 subjects,using 2(moral identity)× 2(evaluation criteria)between the experimental design.After investigating the moral self-threat of the participants,they were primed by the different evaluation standard(individual or normal),and finally measure their pro-social behavior.To explore the impact of individual moral identity and evaluation standard on the pro-social behavior.Through these two experiments,the relationship between self-affirmation and self-consistency was discussed in the pro-social behavior,and the effect of moral identity on the pro-social behavior was also discussed.Through the experimental study,the following results are obtained:(1)After the self-threat,participants who self-affirm their moral identity,high moral identity experienced more dissonance than the low moral identity and showed more pro-social behavior(self-consistency).But if self-affirmation of non-moral qualities,high moral identity experienced less dissonance than low moral identity and showed less pro-social behavior(self-affirmation);participants without self-affirmation,no significant difference between the two.(2)After experiencing self-threat,we primed the individual evaluation standard of the participants,the high moral identity experienced less dissonance than the low moral identity and showed less pro-social behavior(self-affirmation);but primed the normal evaluation standard,no significant difference between the two.