The Relationship Between Self-control Ability And Ego-depletion Task Of Secondary Vocational School Students:the Mediating Effect Of Goal Orientation

According to the self-control energy model,self-control resources are limited,and self-control behaviors will lead to the depletion of self-control resources.However,existing studies have found that the amount of self-depletion effect is small(Hagger,2016).This study aims to explore the effects of self-control and goal orientation on self-depletion tasks.Self-control ability refers to the ability of individuals to restrain and manage their behaviors,emotions and cognitive activities according to social standards or their own will.It is a kind of volitional quality.Goal orientation refers to the intention or reason for an individual to strive to complete an achievement task(such as study,work tasks,sports competition).Specifically,this study explored the influence of individual self-control ability and goal orientation on current performance of self-depletion task and prediction performance of self-depletion task under different difficult task conditions.In this study,using the E-crossing task paradigm,and using the questionnaire on self-control ability of middle school students to select the high and low self-control groups,manipulate the difficulty level of tasks and the completion degree of tasks.Three studies were conducted to explore the relationship among self-control,goal orientation and ego-depletion task.Study 1 adopted 2(self-control ability level: high/low)*2(task difficulty: simple/difficult)with between-subjects design.Groups with high and low self-control ability(75 secondary vocational students each)were randomly assigned to simple or difficult ego-depletion task groups to complete simple/difficult ego-depletion task.The results showed that in the difficult tasks,the accuracy rate of self-loss task in the group with high self-control ability was significantly higher than that in the group with low self-control ability.In simple tasks,there was no significant difference in the accuracy of self-consuming tasks between the groups with high self-control ability and those with low self-control ability.In order to explore the reasons why the effect of self-control ability on the accuracy rate of ego-depletion task is significant in the difficult task,the goal orientation was added as a mediator variable in study 2.Using the single-factor between subject design,and the independent variable was self-control ability(high/low).First,the groups with high and low self-control ability(36 secondary vocational studentseach)were required to complete the ego-depletion task.Then,the achievement goal orientation scale was used to measure the goal orientation of the two groups.The results show that performance avoidance goal plays a mediating role in the influence of self-control ability on ego-depletion task in difficult tasks.Study 3 explored the relationship between self-control ability,goal orientation and predictive ego-depletion tasks in difficult tasks.The predictive self-depletion task refers to that the subjects don't really complete the ego-depletion task,but are told to complete it,but have not yet started to complete the ego-depletion task.Using the single-factor between subject design,and the independent variable was self-control ability(high/low).The dependent variable is the motivation to predictive ego-depletion tasks.Use two self-assessment questions to measure "how motivated are you to accomplish this task for you","how important is it for you to successfully accomplish this task".Use Likert's 7-point score to get the average score.Firstly,the high and low self-control group(33 students in each secondary vocational school)was assigned the task of self-depletion to be completed,and the Participants were told that they needed to complete the next task according to the rules.Then,before the task started(actually never really started),participants completed two questions to measure the motivation of ego-depletion tasks.Then,the achievement goal orientation scale was used to measure the goal orientation of the two groups.The results show that mastery approach goal plays a mediating role in the influence of self-control ability on ego-depletion task in difficult tasks.By manipulating the level of difficulty and the degree of completion of tasks,this study found that performance avoidance goal played a mediating role in the influence of self-control ability on ego-depletion task in difficult tasks,and mastery approach goal played a mediating role in the influence of self-control ability on predictive ego-depletion task in difficult tasks.