Effects Of Social Exclusion On Self-control:the Effect Of Emotion And Self-efficacy

Self-control is the ability of people to consciously control their direction of action,in order to meet social norms or achieve long-term goals.Self-control can bring positive effects to individuals.On the contrary,self-control failure will lead to various negative psychological and bad behaviors,including attacks,cheating,procrastination,overeating and impulsive buying.Social exclusion refers to a phenomena and processes that people rejected by others or groups.Previous studies have shown that social exclusion impairs self-control(Baumeister,Dewall,Ciarocco,&Twenge,2005).Therefore,it is particularly important to study the mechanism of social exclusion on self-control and how to reduce its negative effects.However,domestic studies mainly focus on the effects of self-control failure and athlete’s self-control interventions.They less discuss self-control under social exclusion.Therefore,it remains to be proved whether the paradigms and results of relevant research abroad apply to Chinese college students.In addition,there are controversies and limitations in the study of self-control on social exclusion.From the perspective of emotion,some researchers believe that social exclusion can cause negative emotions,while negative emotions can reduce self-control levels;but others believe that social exclusion can lead to numbness or neutral emotions,the emotional state has nothing to do with the behavior resulting from social exclusion.From the perspective of cognition,individual’s judgment of his or her own ability may have an effect on self-control.Studies have found that there is an interaction between self-efficacy and self-control behavior on the implicit level.A recent study also found that a decline in self-efficacy leads to a decrease in self-control behavior in follow-up tasks.However,previous studies did not explore whether general self-efficacy regulates self-control,nor did they interfere with self-control by manipulating special self-efficacy.Based on previous literature review,this study investigated the effect of self-efficacy and emotion on self-control of college students under social exclusion.Experiments selected Chinese college students as participants and used the recall writing paradigm to manipulate social exclusion.The self-control level was measured by the correct number and response time of Stroop task.In Experiment 1,the aim was to examine whether emotions play an intermediary role in the impact of social exclusion on self-control.It was a exclusion type(the rejected vs.the accepted vs.the controlled)between-group design.The negative and positive emotions of participants before and after the social exclusion operation were measured.In Experiment 2,the aim was to explore the role of general self-efficacy in regulating self-control under social exclusion.It was a 3(exclusion type:the rejected vs.the accepted vs.the controlled)×2(general self-efficacy:high-efficiency vs.low-efficiency)between-group design.The General Self-efficacy Scale(GSES)was used to measure the self-efficacy of participants.In Experiment 3,the aim was to further explore the effects of improving special self-efficacy on self-control under social exclusion.It was a special self-efficacy level(the increased vs.the decreased vs.the controlled)between-group design.The special self-efficacy was manipulated by randomly giving participants false feedback in the context of competition.The results showed that:(1)Social exclusion will increase negative emotions,reduce positive emotions and self-control,but neither negative emotions nor positive emotions play an intermediary role between social exclusion and self-control.(2)General self-efficacy has a moderating effect on the relationship between social exclusion and self-control.When the individual’s general self-efficacy is low,social exclusion will significantly reduce the level of self-control;when the individual’s general self-efficacy is high,society exclusion has little effect on self-control.(3)Giving individuals positive feedback in the competitive situation can enhance their special self-efficacy,and then improve their self-control.Therefore,from the perspective of emotion,social exclusion has a negative impact on the individual’s emotions and reduces their self-control level,but emotions do not predict the decrease of self-control level under social exclusion.This may be related to other factors such as emotional regulation.From the perspective of cognition,general self-efficacy and special self-efficacy can relieve the negative impact of social exclusion on self-control,which shows that self-cognition has important influence on self-control under social exclusion,and future research can further explore emotions and cognitive interactions.