The Influence Of Unconscious Goal Prming On Overcoming Ego Depletion

Self-control refers to one's capacity to change,modify or inhibit dominant impulses,competing urges,or behaviors(Baumeister & Heatherton,1996).The self-control strength model proposes that exerting self-control consumes self-control strength and thereby reduces the amount of strength that is available for subsequent self-control(Baumeister,Bratslavsky,Muraven,& Tice,1998).Unconscious goal is a mental representation of the satisfactory state or outcome of the behavior.Researchers found that unconscious process could change cognition and behavior as the way of conscious process(Aarts,Dijksterhuis,& De,2001).The present study hypothesized that unconscious goal that embodies the automatic process can overcome ego depletion.Experiment 1 was aimed at testing the hypothesis that supraliminal goal priming could overcome ego depletion.We used 2-factor between-subject design,73 subjects were divided into ego depletion group and control group through Stroop task.Then they finished a scrambled sentence task to active the persistent or neutral goal.At last,they completed the isometric handgrip squeeze.It was found that ego depletion had remarkable effect.And the unconscious goal priming had remarkable effect,subjects primed with persistent goal performed better than non-primed subjects.Experiment 2 was aimed at testing the hypothesis that subliminal goal priming could overcome ego depletion.We used 2-factor between-subject design,71 subjects were divided into ego depletion group and control group through Stroop task.This study used the subliminal priming paradigm to prime persistent goal of the subjects.Experiment 2 had found that the main effect of ego depletion,the unconscious goal priming,and the interaction of ego depletion and unconscious goal priming.Under the depleted conditions,participants who were primed with the persistent goal performed significantly better than those who were primed with neutral goal.But under the non-depleted conditions,there was no difference between two groups.In Experiment 3,we used 2-factor between-subject design,75 subjects were randomly divided into four groups according to goal priming(goal priming VS no priming)and affect valence(positive VS neutral).After finished the Stroop task,we used the subliminal priming paradigm to prime self-control goal and affect valence of the subjects.At last,they completed the stop signal task.It was found that unconscious goal priming could overcome ego depletion,unconscious goal priming and affect valence had significant interaction effect.Unconscious goal priming can overcome ego depletion through supraliminal and subliminal priming.The influence of supraliminal goal priming didn't depend on the depletion conditions.But subliminal goal priming works only in depletion conditions.Ego depletion can be overcome when “self-control” goal becomes activated without conscious awareness.Affect valence could take moderate effect to handle the relationship between the unconscious goal priming and ego depletion.Subjects who activated goal with positive affect valence focused more on the goal,so that the ego depletion could be overridden by goal priming.The present study suggest that activing self-control goal through unconscious prime can overcome the ego depletion,and the affect valence of the goal has moderate effect between them.Subjects join in this process without conscious engage.